Tuesday, 1 April 2025

Bills

Building Legislation Amendment (Buyer Protections) Bill 2025

Second reading

Debate resumed.

Tim McCURDY (Ovens Valley) (15:06): I am delighted to continue my contribution on the Building Legislation Amendment (Buyer Protections) Bill 2025 that was interrupted by question time. I was saying just before question time that the member for Footscray was very critical of the member for Polwarth’s contribution. I thought it was very detailed and very thorough, and he also spoke about both sides of this bill. He certainly spoke about builders – we do not want dodgy builders and we certainly want to support those who have been ripped off by dodgy builders – but his contribution was very level keeled and I think very even on both sides. The member for Footscray tried to point out that he spent his whole time talking about wanting to support dodgy builders, and that is not the case on this side of the house. We will not stand by as Labor turn their back at every turn and introduce policies that make it more difficult to own a home, more difficult to rent a home or more difficult to put a roof over your head. Whether it be in regional Victoria or metropolitan Melbourne, the same problem applies.

We know that the bill’s intention is to rectify unresolved defects. We have seen companies like Porter Davis and others go broke. They have left home owners absolutely high and dry, and we want to see that that does not happen again. Certainly, some of those were without insurance and some cases were just poor workmanship. Yes, we need to protect purchasers and we need to protect those who are building a new home, because for many of them it is, quite rightly, the biggest investment of their life, and I get that. But there has to be that balance between protecting the purchaser without demonising the builders, and that is what this bill is doing in some circumstances. Without builders there is no housing industry, and we all know that. The Victorian Labor government is just making it easier for builders to want to build interstate and investors to want to invest interstate, and purchasers are now looking interstate because of the policies that continually get introduced by this government. It is one thing to want to stamp out dodgy builders – I get that – but at the same time we have to protect the builders who are doing a good job and are providing the homes for people in Victoria. I am all for protecting those purchasers, but not at the expense of the building industry, because the building industry is the lifeblood of Victoria’s economy.

This bill, like many others, like the rental providers bill that we had earlier this year – the Consumer and Planning Legislation Amendment (Housing Statement Reform) Bill 2025 – claims to protect purchasers, but in fact in the long term it will make life more difficult. It was the same, as I say, with previous bills. It was claimed the Consumer and Planning Legislation Amendment (Housing Statement Reform) Bill would protect renters, and that is great – we want to protect renters as well as purchasers – but with more and more protections, in fact in the long term it will actually make it more difficult for this industry, and Labor knows this. They know that there are long-term effects. They just want the short-term sugar hit to try and be seen to be protecting the battler and looking after the underdog, but at the end of the day long-term damage is being done to the builders. We will see those builders migrate interstate because of the policies that are being introduced by this government, and at the end of the day the purchaser will pay the price and all Victorians will pay the price.

This bill also establishes a new Building and Plumbing Commission, or BPC. It has a fancy new name, but it has the same old, tired personnel; it is the Victorian Building Authority, the Victorian Managed Insurance Authority and Consumer Affairs Victoria. There are no changes to quality control, no guarantee of dispute resolution and no extra monitoring, just an extra stick to whack builders.

It is not just me and it is not just the opposition that are talking about this. The Master Builders is the leading agency in this industry, and here is a quote from the Master Builders of Victoria:

While MBV supports strong consumer protections, these changes risk unfairly penalising reputable builders while failing to target the real issue – non-compliant operators who evade responsibility. MBV is actively engaging … to advocate for a fairer and more balanced approach, including reforms that protect consumers while ensuring builders are given a just and reasonable process to respond to complaints.

This is the Master Builders screaming out to be listened to, to be heard and to be consulted – not just the government saying, ‘We’ve written to the Master Builders, we’ve told them this is what’s happening and that’s our consultation.’ Clearly there has been no genuine consultation with the Master Builders of Victoria.

Another concern in this bill that I am very concerned about is the 10-year period for defect claims. Consumers are able to lodge defect claims against builders for up to 10 years without a clear definition of what the word ‘defect’ can mean and without obligations for consumers to raise concerns and issues in a prompt and timely manner. This will lead to ongoing uncertainty and will lead to fewer builders and increased costs, and we know that is the case. Again going back to the Master Builders Association of Victoria, they want more understanding around the definitions of ‘defect’ and ‘serious defect’. They go on to say:

We consider these need to be refined and narrowed down. An appropriate method for doing this is to note in the Bill – “as prescribed in the Building Regulations” – …

That would actually help, that definition, because a defect is defined as ‘anything that is not structural’. It is quite outrageous that currently there are two years to get a defect completed. I heard from those on the other side like the member for Footscray talking about people who do not get their defects fixed, and I want to see that changed. But changing it from two to 10 years is not going to change what is going on currently. Those dodgy builders will remain dodgy builders, and if they are not going to fix a defect in two years, increasing it to 10 years is not going to change anything about the defects. It just makes it a more costly operation for those going long term, and that will have to be built into the price of a new house.

The member for Polwarth also mentioned monopoly insurance. As we know with other state government insurers like TAC and the Victorian WorkCover Authority, there is a strong concern that bureaucratic costs will not be capped, premiums will steadily increase, compliance costs especially for small builders will become burdensome and premiums will be at risk of becoming a new tax. The new BPC, the Building and Plumbing Commission, will be able to use the need for their insurance as a powerful lever to insist on certain actions and behaviours from builders that could be unfair or unreasonable, particularly during an unresolved dispute. As I say, if the nanny state continues here, builders will continue to leave Victoria if these policies continue to be introduced. We know we have a housing crisis. That is something we all agree on, on both sides. We do have a housing crisis, and with these policies, although we know the intention, the bill certainly does not solve what it is trying to solve.

Another major concern is the developer bond scheme. The intention again is builders being responsible for their work. But the mechanism does not fit with existing accountability structures, and there is widespread concern about the 2 per cent bond scheme. The 2 per cent bond scheme will just add a further 2 per cent onto the cost of the building, particularly when 2 per cent is paid before the certificate of occupancy. It would be more sensible to pay that 2 per cent after the unit has been sold, and that would be more practical. Rather this is another up-front cost by the builder. You would have to be blind Freddy to not understand that that cost will just be incorporated into the build, and it will make building more and more expensive. There is a list, which I do not think I am going to get time to go into today, of costs and associated costs that are going to increase the cost of a build anywhere between $23,000 and $35,000: the developer bond scheme, the first resort warranty insurance, compliance and documentation, increased inspections and extended liability. That could be anywhere between $23,000 and $35,000, as I suggested.

As I say, it is not just the opposition that is concerned about this bill. MBV, Master Builders Victoria, and HIA both condemn the proposed new building legislation as unfair and unworkable. They go on to say:

Master Builders Victoria (MBV) and Housing Industry Association (HIA) have issued a united rejection of the Victoria Government’s proposed new building dispute resolution legislation, describing it as ‘unfair and unworkable’.

The Building Legislation Amendment (Buyer Protections 2025) Bill, which was introduced into Parliament … is intended to better protect consumers, but MBV and HIA say while the intent is laudable, the impact of the proposed changes goes way beyond protecting consumers and will unfairly punish reputable builders with hasty and misconceived definitions and powers.

Although we all want to see dodgy builders get thrown out of this industry so our new purchasers are protected – we get all that – it is criminal to see what we are going to do to the good builders, the builders who do a good job in Victoria and support the building industry. It is really important to get behind those builders and not demonise them as this government seems to be wanting to do.

Dylan WIGHT (Tarneit) (15:16): It gives me great pleasure this afternoon to rise in favour of, and make a contribution on, the Building Legislation Amendment (Buyer Protections) Bill 2025. I do so, unfortunately, with a whole bunch of experience from dealing with constituents in Tarneit that have been caught up in the very thing that this legislation is aiming to stop. Unfortunately the great Australian dream of owning your own home, building your own home, has far too often turned into the great Australian nightmare. It certainly has for a number of hardworking families in my electorate of Tarneit.

I have listened to the couple of contributions prior to me. I listened to the member for Polwarth sort of ramble on for half an hour about protecting the industry, about making sure that we protect the industry. Protecting the industry from who? From hardworking families that have been put out of pocket, that have had their dreams destroyed by dodgy builders and unscrupulous activities that have made their dreams absolute nightmares? I say to the member for Polwarth, I know who those on this side of the house stand with and that is those hardworking families that have had their dreams destroyed by dodgy builders. The member for Polwarth and the opposition have made clear to the Victorian people who they stand with, and it is not hardworking Victorian families.

The member for Ovens Valley, just prior to me speaking, went on at length about the Allan Labor government and this legislation demonising builders – trash, just absolute trash from the member for Ovens Valley. Nobody on this side is demonising builders. Let me just say, if you are a builder doing the right thing and delivering the product, the house, that you have been paid to deliver, you have nothing to fear. There should be no dramas. These are incredibly important consumer protections, and to say that introducing them and supporting Victorian families is demonising builders, I will repeat, is just trash.

It is frankly astounding that I am standing here and making this contribution whilst those opposite move a reasoned amendment – ‘Oh, we understand there’s an issue, but here is this reasoned amendment, so just do nothing,’ – like we have not consulted with the industry. The member for Ovens Valley said that we have not consulted with Master Builders Victoria. I guarantee that we have. What a surprise that the master builders association does not like this legislation. Who would have thought that?

It is astounding that the opposition stand here today in opposition to this legislation and in opposition to supporting Victorian families. It is astounding in itself why you would side with dodgy builders instead of Victorian families, but it is also astounding because of the enormous 180 that the opposition have done on this issue, on this piece of legislation, in the past decade. This is a party that in 2013 looked to introduce legislation that looked very similar to this. When the Liberal Party room in Victoria were able to find some values, when some of them had some values, they planned to introduce legislation that looked very similar to this. In fact at the time the member for Bulleen and his Liberal colleagues promised the reforms would provide fairer, quicker and cheaper resolution of disputes, which sounds pretty similar to this piece of legislation to me. Yet, as we unfortunately typically see with the Liberal Party in Victoria, they got cold feet and the Napthine Liberal government at the time pulled the bill from the legislative program.

A member interjected.

Dylan WIGHT: Yes, perhaps. So in 2013, a fantastic time in Victorian history, the then Liberal government decide to actually do something with the gift that is government over four years – because I am not quite sure that they achieved much else – so they find some values, they find some morals and then at the last minute they pull the legislation, because they do as they always do, and they do not side with Victorian families. We could go through several examples of those who they choose to side with instead of Victorian families, but in this instance they side with dodgy builders instead. Can you imagine that? You have got a situation where not all but a very small minority of builders out there are doing the wrong thing, and instead of putting in robust frameworks through legislation to help Victorian families and to protect them and to protect their investment – the largest investment that they will ever make in their lives – you walk in here, you move a reasoned amendment to do nothing and you oppose the legislation. It is utterly shameful, yet we should not be surprised.

The other thing that makes the position of the opposition quite astounding, frankly, is that just last year the Leader of the Opposition the member for Berwick, the new –

Bridget Vallence: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, I draw your attention to the state of the house.

Quorum formed.

Dylan WIGHT: I mean, they do not like the truth, do they? How about instead of calling quorums every time things get slightly uncomfortable, you come in here and you support working Victorian families rather than dodgy builders? How about that?

I mean, the glass jaw of those opposite – every time things get a little bit tough, they either call a point of order or they call a quorum. How about you support working Victorian families instead of dodgy builders?

Now, as I was saying, the part-time Leader of the Opposition just last year shared in the chamber that he himself had been a victim of a system that unfairly penalised consumers:

In 2000 my wife and I built our first house, and we built through a builder called Warburton Homes. About halfway through that construction Warburton Homes went into liquidation. It was a challenge.

He goes on:

… it puts you in a position of saying ‘Can I or can’t I afford this?

Well, Leader of the Opposition, I would say that so many Victorian families, like the families in Tarneit that have been caught up by these unscrupulous acts and so many Victorians, do not have the money, cannot afford this and do not have the money to get themselves out of this. Now, you may. That is a very fortunate position for the Leader of the Opposition to be in. But I implore him and I implore those opposite to side with hardworking Victorian families that have been caught up by dodgy builders instead of siding with the dodgy builders themselves.

Wayne FARNHAM (Narracan) (15:26): I am pleased to rise today to talk on the Building Legislation Amendment (Buyer Protections) Bill 2025, and yes, from the outset, we do oppose this bill absolutely 100 per cent. What I do not like in the industry is dodgy builders. I hate it, and I have given this government solutions time and time again. Time and time again I have given the government solutions on how to get rid of dodgy builders out of the industry. It was interesting listening to the member for Tarneit, or the member for three-piece suits, as he is known, and all he talked about was ‘Dodgy builders, dodgy builders, dodgy builders.’ I am just wondering how much consultation those on the other side have actually done themselves. There are 50-something members over there. I am wondering if any one of those members rang a builder and explained the bill to them and what the reaction was. I doubt they did. I wonder if any member on that side of the chamber bothered to take the time to sit down with Master Builders Victoria and the Housing Industry Association (HIA). I bet not one of them, not one member of their caucus, pushed back against the minister on this bill and started to question the unintended consequences of the bill – not one; I will guarantee that. This is the problem with those opposite; they are too scared to ask questions.

I do have to reference a combined statement from Master Builders Australia and the HIA. The very first line says that MBA and HIA both condemn proposed new legislation as ‘unfair and unworkable’ and:

We all understand the need to protect consumers and have a fair, reasonable and respectful dispute resolution process, but this legislation takes a potential sledgehammer to the rights of builders …

HIA said:

Where is the logic when under these new rules, a builder could potentially be at risk of being subjected to a rectification order a decade or more after they’ve finished the job?

Another one from the HIA:

And to add insult to injury, builders have no effective right to challenge the making of an order.

This is where the problem with this bill is. You have introduced a bill while you are reforming domestic building contracts. That is number one; that is the reasoned amendment. Get the contracts done first, consult the industry and then bring the building – really, really simple.

The other problem with the bill is the definition of a defect. The definition of a defect is very important here because if you go and look at what the definition of a defect is, a minor defect is any other defect that is not structural. Any other defect that is not structural can be claimed against a builder for up to 10 years. That is ridiculous when the warranty period on a lot of items that a builder puts in a house might only be seven years. So how do you hold him to account for 10 years when the warranty is only seven years on certain products? Let me give you an example. Let us say there is an easy hooker under a sink, it has got a leak and that leak has been there for three years. There is no onus on the owner to report that to the builder. After three years of a water leak the damage is more.

There used to be a system when I was building where we had an umpire. It was a very good system. Those opposite may not be aware of this, but there is a thing called the Guide to Standards and Tolerances within the building industry. It is literally the bible. Now, what would happen if you got into a dispute with a client is that you would call what is now the Victorian Building Authority (VBA) – I cannot remember what it was called back then – and a qualified person would come out. They had the contract and had the standards and tolerances guide. The client was there, the builder was there and we went through the whole list. He would say, ‘Builder, you have to fix A, B, C and D,’ or, ‘Client, you’re off the planet; that’s not right.’ It was a really simple thing. You paid a fee and they came out. We got rid of dispute resolution very quickly and very easily. This is probably what the government should look towards, not this legislation. A builder can end up in VCAT, and they talk about going to mediation. That is fine, go to mediation, but consumers can do silly things too. If a builder is being held to account for something that is not his fault and he goes to VCAT, his licence can be suspended. That is not fair. That is the unintended consequence of this bill. We say we want to get more people into homes. Well, what if you got a Metricon or a Simonds that is in that exact situation and they have their licence removed? They are two of the biggest home builders in Victoria. How are you going to increase supply? Yes, there needs to be protection for consumers; I get it every day of the week. There are dodgy builders; I get that. There are dodgy accountants, dodgy solicitors, dodgy doctors.

A member interjected.

Wayne FARNHAM: There are dodgy politicians, as the minister just pointed out. So, yes, I agree, get rid of the dodgy element, but this bill is not fair bill.

This bill will increase costs by up to about $30,000 on a domestic house. We are trying to get people into homes. We are making it less affordable again. Let us go over the 2 per cent bond on high-rises. This is a brain fade by the government. They obviously do not know how it works. You have got a developer. He engages a builder. That builder will have a 5 per cent retention on him. It is 2.5 per cent for 12 months. He gets 2.5 per cent back on practical completion and then there will be a 2.5 per cent defect liability period for 12 months. He does not get that money back if there are outstanding defects. There is already a bond, but you are going to put on another bond, which the developer will put onto the price of the unit, which will cost the consumer more. The developer is not going to going to wear 2 per cent for two years. He will pass that cost on, and then hopefully he gets the money back after two years and he has made an extra 2 per cent. It is actually not smart legislation.

The biggest problem we have in construction defects is water leaks. This is where the government is going to the back end. You have got to go to the front end to fix the problem. If you want to protect consumers, introduce more inspections. It is really simple. Waterproofing in Victoria is not inspected. Those over that side might be shocked that waterproofing is not inspected in this state. When you are talking high-rise, the biggest cause of defects is waterproofing. So how about you bring in legislation to inspect the waterproofing and make sure it is done right. It is done in New South Wales and Queensland but not in Victoria. Fix the problems at the front end and you will have less defects at the back end, but you cannot hold builders liable for 10 years on minor defects. It is absolutely stupid.

Yes, consumers need to be protected. I will encourage the government to go back into Hansard, have a look at my contributions and maybe pick some suggestions out of there – or ring me directly. I am happy to help if you want to protect consumers, but this bill will decimate the building industry. Here is another fact for those opposite: there are 20,000 builders in Victoria. How many do you think are practising? Out of 20,000, we have 6000 practising builders. We lost over 800 last year, gone into liquidation. They already carry a burden from non rise and fall contracts. They already carry that burden. They lock into that. If you start putting this on builders, you will have builders leaving this industry – no doubt. Every builder I spoke to has said ‘Stuff it, I’m out’, because you cannot enforce a warranty period that is greater than the product warranty.

All of a sudden you are going to get a belligerent or a vexatious client – and they are out there – and you get tied up with them and you have your licence cancelled over something that is not your fault, because sometimes, and this might be a shock to those opposite, not everyone tells the truth. If a client has dug a trench beside a garage and undermined the footing next to it, it is all overgrown with vegetation and all of a sudden that footing snaps, they are not going to tell the builder or the VBA that they did it, because they know it is going to cost them $50,000 to fix it. They will drag that builder through the process – not his fault – and he will get his licence suspended until he can prove otherwise, and that is an expensive process.

If you want dispute resolution, go back to how it used to be done, not this method. This method is going to kill this industry. I have sat down for hours and hours on this bill. I have talked to stakeholders everywhere. This is not the solution. Think of something else. If this government passes this bill through, it will prove to me they do not understand the domestic construction industry. This is telling me the minister is absolutely clueless as to how to fix it.

Ella GEORGE (Lara) (15:36): I rise today to speak on the Building Legislation Amendment (Buyer Protections) Bill 2025. I would like to acknowledge the minister and his team for the tremendous work that they have done with this bill, because this is a really important bill. At its heart this bill is about protecting Victorians – ordinary Victorians who have worked hard and saved hard to buy their home. It might be their first home for their family. Those Victorians deserve the protections that are offered in this bill.

That is why I think it is so disappointing to see the opposition today say that they do not support this bill. Instead of being on the side of Victorians, they are on the side of dodgy builders – the dodgy builders that this bill will protect Victorians from. I was astounded hearing the contributions from those opposite. All I can say is that I am shocked and that they are backing dodgy builders and turning their backs on the Victorians that they represent. This is low, even for those on the other side. And this current position is astounding considering that this is a party that promised to introduce legislation that looked very similar to this bill that we are speaking to today when they were last in government. As usual though, those opposite were all talk and no follow-through, because only Labor governments actually deliver progressive reforms like this that Victorians deserve.

I will quote from none other than a former Liberal leader and the current member for Bulleen in the chamber with us today, who as Minister for Planning promised to introduce reforms that would include a one-stop shop for builder practitioner regulation and domestic building consumer protection, better and more accessible insurance cover, improved oversight and discipline of non-performing builders and better and more accessible information for consumers. It sounds pretty good to me. I do not know what my colleagues think, but I reckon that would make for some pretty good reform in the building industry. He was very articulate in his former role as minister. In what seemed like a rare moment of political bravery for the Liberals, these reforms were looking to establish a domestic building consumer protection fund, which would replace the existing insurance scheme, and allow home owners to claim from that fund for incomplete or defective building work where it was certified that there was a rectification order that had not been complied with. That is pretty brave politics, if you ask me.

At the time the member for Bulleen and his Liberal colleagues promised that these reforms would provide fairer, quicker and cheaper resolution of disputes and that they would deliver far-reaching improvement to the building system for Victorian consumers and builders. Again, these sound like fantastic and well-needed reforms, reforms that would really back Victorians and back Victorian communities. At the last minute the Napthine Liberal government got cold feet, pulled their bill from the legislative program and simply made these reforms disappear altogether, because when push comes to shove, those opposite just cannot bring themselves to support working Victorians. History is repeating itself today in this chamber. I am shocked, but as the member for Tarneit said earlier, we should not be surprised.

The member for Tarneit spoke on the Leader of the Opposition’s experiences in building a home. This must have been awful for his family. It speaks again to this need for better protections for Victorians who are building homes and who are purchasing homes.

Some of the Leader of the Opposition’s colleagues have been even more vocal about the need for a building industry regulator in this state. Only six months ago, the member for Mornington stood up in Parliament and called for us to take exactly the action that we are taking here today. The member for Mornington said:

Sadly, the building landscape at the moment in Victoria is akin to the Wild West, failing to protect consumers from dodgy builders and developers …

This government does need to take action. We have situations of windows that can barely open, mouldy ceilings, no soundproofing, leaky ceilings and balconies – in fact, balconies that have collapsed. The list of faults we see in new buildings in Victoria and across Australia is seemingly endless. This Labor government needs to take action, and I am pleased to say to the member for Mornington that this is exactly what we are doing; we are taking action with this bill today.

A Liberal member for the Northern Metropolitan Region in the other place has also spoken regularly about the plight of homebuyers who have been victimised by dodgy builders, and he said:

… the Leader of the Opposition and I and many members of the coalition have spoken to victims of collapsed builders. We have heard firsthand the gut-wrenching stories, and anyone who has heard these stories knows how important it is that the government takes action to stop them from happening to other people.

To the member for Northern Metropolitan Region: I could not agree more, and members on this side of the house could not agree more. This bill allows us to take exactly that action that the Leader of the Opposition, the member for Bulleen and their colleagues have so loudly supported in this place, and yet when it is time to put their money where their mouths are, they have refused to publicly support this bill and offer any kind of meaningful support to working Victorians, those people who have fallen victim to dodgy building companies.

This bill will amend a number of pieces of legislation to bring together reform that will back Victorians who are building their homes and who are purchasing homes here in our state. This bill will amend the Building Act 1993, the Domestic Building Contracts Act 1995, the Subdivision Act 1988, the Sale of Land Act 1962 and the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal Act 1998 to implement major reforms to the building regulatory framework. This bill is the first step in implementing our government’s building reform program, which aims to support Victoria’s housing statement, an ambitious vision for our state – because on this side of the house, we recognise that we need more homes right across Victoria. That is why, through our housing statement, we have a clear target to deliver more homes in Victoria over the next 30 years, and this bill will be a big part of ensuring that that target can succeed and ensuring that we have the provisions to make sure that we are not just building more homes, but we are building quality homes, because every Victorian deserves to live in a quality home.

The bill will create a new integrated building watchdog, it will provide enforcement powers to fix dodgy work and it will create a new building insurance scheme to protect consumers. The new integrated building watchdog will ensure that Victorians have more protections and peace of mind when they are building, buying or renovating their homes. These increased protections will ensure that Victorians can have confidence in the sector – confidence that they will be protected and supported when they are buying or building their homes. The building and plumbing commission will be a powerful watchdog that can oversee domestic building and plumbing industries across the state, and this bill creates this integrated regulator, bringing together all aspects of building quality control, regulation, insurance and dispute resolution into a single agency. Currently, regulators can only order builders to rectify poor workmanship before occupancy, and this new legislation grants the regulator greater enforcement powers, allowing it to intervene even after a building is occupied. If serious defects are not addressed, the regulator can halt occupancy permits and off-the-plan sales for apartment buildings. Essentially, if it is not fixed, it will not be sold. A great measure in this legislation is that these powers extend for up to 10 years post occupancy, meaning that builders will face significant consequences for unresolved issues long after a property is sold.

With the time that I have left today I would like to speak briefly on what we are seeing in the Lara electorate. The Lara electorate and the wider Geelong region are benefiting from our government’s Big Build program.

Our Big Housing Build would not be possible without the support of our amazing registered housing providers in Geelong. In the Lara electorate in particular I would like to focus on the Northern Geelong Rental Housing Cooperative. I have spoken about them in this house before and the incredible work that they do delivering and managing properties for Victorians and ensuring that their clients have quality homes, because that is something that they value, like we do. Thanks to partnerships like this the Labor government has made an investment of $87 million into 281 social housing and other capital programs in the Lara electorate.

On this side of the house we understand that more homes mean more opportunities, and as I said earlier with the housing statement, that is why we have set that clear target to deliver more homes in Geelong over the next 30 years. In the Geelong community this means 128,000 new homes, and for those people who are buying those homes, I think they deserve the protections that this bill will deliver. They deserve quality homes, they do not deserve to be ripped off by dodgy builders and they certainly deserve to be respected, and that is exactly what we are doing on this side of the house: we are delivering more homes and we are delivering the protections that buyers deserve. I commend this bill to the house.

Matthew GUY (Bulleen) (15:46): I do not really spend time looking at other people’s speeches; I am happy to make my own comments, although I really would encourage Labor MPs who have been here two and a half years to be able to learn to deliver a speech rather than read it and maybe –

Members interjecting.

Matthew GUY: Oh, here we go. Come in, spinner. Here they come. Listen to them. Here they come.

Members interjecting.

Matthew GUY: Fair dinkum. If you are going to insult me, can you be wise enough not to script it? Like, if you are going to have a go at me, maybe you do not want to have to script it. I mean, fair dinkum.

Members interjecting.

Matthew GUY: Did you use ChatGPT to have a go at me? Fair dinkum. You are proof that even when evolution happened it took a day off. If you have to script an insult at me, I tell you what.

Luba Grigorovitch: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, on relevance, if the member could bring it back to the bill.

Matthew GUY: What a wise point. I have never heard of that one before. I was actually responding to somebody who had a go at me. Bloody hell. What have we moved into?

Members interjecting.

Matthew GUY: We have moved into glass jaw territory, have we? Oh, professor. There you go.

Iwan Walters: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, I do not think it is fair for the member for Bulleen to impugn other members when they were merely quoting his words – not attacking, quoting.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Meng Heang Tak): There is no point of order, but I ask the member for Bulleen to perhaps start on making his contribution.

Members interjecting.

Matthew GUY: Glass jaw city – glass jaw.

Members interjecting.

Matthew GUY: Can we do our job, please? Can you do your job, please? Fair dinkum. The bill that is before us –

Members interjecting.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Meng Heang Tak): Order! Can we have some order, please?

Matthew GUY: This is a joke. Can we –

Members interjecting.

Matthew GUY: Can I have my time ceased, please? If we can either commence a speech or – can we commence a speech?

Mathew Hilakari: On a point of order, can we please bring the member back to the bill, rather than time wasting? If he has got nothing to say, sit him down.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Meng Heang Tak): Let us start, thank you.

Matthew GUY: If I could actually commence a contribution on the Building Legislation Amendment (Buyer Protections) Bill 2025, what we have in this presentation is a bill to try and amend the current system, which the government has not bothered to actually look at enforcing. We have enforcement regimes in the Victorian Building Authority today. We have the ability for the VBA to do its job under current legislation.

But what we have now is a presentation on a bill before the house, with scripted Labor MPs coming into this chamber and telling us that we now need to target small builders, but when quoting the government’s Big Build there is no focus whatsoever on targeting the bigger builders – those volume builders who might be committing, in many ways, the offences that the members are coming to this chamber to talk about.

But there is no focus on that. This government, yet again, comes into the chamber looking at targeting small builders and small businesses and those who are seeking to provide a contribution to the economy. This government presents legislation not to reform the current system – to put in place models that the member for Mornington, the member for Berwick, the member for Narracan and even I have come to this chamber with this term, mentioning complaints and featuring defects on building – no. The government then says, ‘We’re going to create an entirely new bureaucracy that is going to target small builders,’ a new bureaucracy that is not necessary and not needed if the current one does its job. If we had a minister that actually focused on doing her job, she would use the current VBA to focus on its enforcement mechanisms to make sure that builders are doing what is required within current legislation.

If the government cannot enforce its own laws and the statutory authority that has been designed to do that cannot be relied on to do it, why should we have faith that a brand new authority costing tens of millions of dollars is somehow going to be any better? Why would any consumer have any faith that a building defect in a decade’s time being reported will somehow be able to be fixed? No-one will have any faith in that, because it is a ridiculous concept. It is almost as stupid as some of the contributions we have been listening to – stupid. It is a stupid concept to say that someone should be able to report their builder for a paint chip – I kid you not, a paint chip – because that is what a minor defect is in the current situation and there is no definition of what it will be in the new situation or if it will be any different. So if the door creaks or, as the member for Narracan said, there are paint chips, in a decade’s time you can report a small builder to a brand new authority that is going to investigate their conduct? Under what guise is that going to be at all provable, realistic, sensible and a good use of taxpayers money? It is going to be none of the above. It is a ridiculous concept.

The reason we oppose this bill, apart from the fact that we have legislation that should be properly enforced, is that if the VBA was actually told by the minister, ‘Go away and do your job, enforce the current legislation, enforce defects under the current regime,’ we might actually get somewhere and this might not be necessary. It also might take on some of the unionised big builders which this legislation is seeking to avoid. The government does not want to take on unions. That is what it is all about. It is about targeting small businesses all over again – and not just targeting them under the current regime, which is six years for major defects and two years for minor. It is going out to 10 years, as I said before, in targeting small builders. Goodness me.

The government does not want to invest in making sure that its current regulatory body does its job or that the minister does her job, because clearly she does not know how to. Instead they roll out yet another press release, and that is what becomes the announceable. It has got to be an announceable. You hear of the bizarre circumstance, scripted and stupid, from many speakers, who say that somehow this is going to be related to the government’s Big Build. It has got nothing to do with it. One is about enabling and one is about enforcement and regulation. The fact that members in this chamber do not even know the difference between a proponent, an enforcement regime and a regulatory regime says it all. They do not know the difference. They are given cheat sheet notes and they read them in this chamber, and somehow that is considered believable. It is not believable.

I say it again. We oppose this bill because we have a regulatory regime that is not working but must be made to work. And it can be made to work, as the shadow minister has said, by getting current enforcement agencies to do their job – by enforcing them and reinforcing them.

I have rung the VBA multiple times under this government, particularly for someone to inspect building works at a property on Thompsons Road that should have been properly done. It was a unionised job, I might add. It is now full of water in the car space. No-one from the VBA has come out in 2½ years. If the VBA had been doing their job, maybe we would not be getting to a stage where in Parliament we hear ridiculous contributions that we have to somehow wipe it all out, create a brand new authority, start again, rebadge it, get another press release and get a whole bunch of sheep with talking points to come in here and say they know what they are talking about, when it is somehow to do with a regulatory authority that is a statutory authority that has an enforcement regime and somehow it relates back to proponents of private building authorities. It is just perplexing.

I say this again: it is comical to our side of the chamber that the government wants to rewrite laws that if they were enforced could and would work. But they are not being enforced and the government is not putting in the resources to enforce them. If they did that, we would have a lot less of these defects that the government is talking about and we would not need this bill.

Paul HAMER (Box Hill) (15:56): I am pleased to rise to speak on the Building Legislation Amendment (Buyer Protections) Bill 2025. I will try and just take the tone down a little bit because this is a very important bill. It is a bill that is dealing with consumer protections, and it is a bill that affects many families, individuals and other people who want to get into the housing market, both within the chamber and within the community.

I am reminded that the Leader of the Opposition himself has talked about his experience when building a home and the difficulties that he faced when the builder went into liquidation. Even though he found another builder, that builder also declared himself bankrupt before finishing the job. That must have been a very difficult process for the Leader of the Opposition go through. I reflect a little bit on my own experience. We purchased a new home from a developer builder who, thankfully, did complete the build. We purchased it midway through the build, and they finished the build. But after the build there were some true defects that we identified, and the builder had just disappeared. In this case they had not actually gone into liquidation; they were just impossible to contact. Because they had not gone into liquidation, the builders warranty insurance did not apply and kick in, so it was with great difficulty that we tried to get anything fixed. While that particular element is not addressed in this legislation – this legislation is more about the building side and particularly those builders who are not able to complete the build – it addresses the many consumer issues that are faced through that process.

Purchasing, building or renovating home is a huge, significant financial decision. It is probably the most significant financial decision that anyone will ever make in their life. It can be a long process getting building plans approved, dealing with architects and engaging with a builder and all of the subcontractors. It can take a long time. Many things can potentially go wrong through that process. As the Leader of the Opposition has seen firsthand and as we have seen in many other examples, construction companies across Australia have gone into liquidation or administration, leaving thousands of families in limbo with their savings gone and nothing to show for them except a concrete slab and some framing. Usually this will be at fairly short notice, leaving consumers who have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars into their dream home stuck and frozen. My office has dealt with a number of local residents that have gone through this in recent times, and it really is heartbreaking.

I am sure probably every member in this place has also experienced that same story, particularly at various times when we have seen builders make the news for the wrong reasons. One particular resident was constructing a townhouse for his family and was again totally blindsided when the builder went into administration. He was left $800,000 out of pocket and was desperately working to confirm that his builder had adequate insurance. As I was mentioning before, even in my own case we were able to take possession of a new property, but it took us several years just to try and address the defects that were part of that building, even though it had been granted an occupancy certificate.

These are the issues that the government is responding to, and they are real issues. They are issues that affect people across every electorate in the state. As we have also debated many times in this house, we want to see home ownership continue in this state. It has always been a long-held dream for many Australians to get into the property market and own their own home. Along with the many other measures that the government is taking to help promote the development and building of homes, we need to have protections in place so that those who are purchasing homes can have confidence that their property will be built and also the necessary insurance and protections are in place in case something happens to the builder along the way.

I think that this bill really sets up that consumer protection element for the domestic building industry. It facilitates the creation of a new integrated building watchdog and gives it tough new enforcement powers to fix dodgy work. The integrated regulator, the Building and Plumbing Commission, will take on responsibilities which are currently managed by a number of different agencies, including the Victorian Building Authority, the Victorian Managed Insurance Authority and Domestic Building Dispute Resolution Victoria, to create a one-stop shop for homebuyers, renovators and practitioners. This integrated commission will have tough new powers, including for enforcement. If the serious defects identified by the commission are not rectified, the regulator can stop the issuing of occupancy permits or the completion of off-the-plan sales for apartment buildings. In other words, if it is not fixed, it is not for sale. This is going to be really important, particularly for builders that are specialising in the apartment market. Obviously there are more and more people who are choosing to live in apartments, but the main goal of any builder and any developer is to bring that product to market and to sell their product; there is no point having a product that is not able to be sold. I think these reforms will help in that process, because what we want the industry to sell to market is a good product, a sound product that consumers can trust will be a solid home for years to come.

Just going on a bit more about the regulator, our current building regulatory system is, as mentioned before, quite disparate. In the words of the commissioner of the Victorian Building Authority Anna Cronin:

At the moment consumers get ping ponged from one entity to the other …

Consumers have a pretty horrendous journey. Even if it works well, it’s a pretty complex journey.

That is why this legislation will seek to combine some of those functions of the different organisations into the Building and Plumbing Commission to try and coordinate and consolidate all of the different regulatory authorities and to try and assist consumers to get the product that they deserve. As I mentioned at the outset, this is an expensive product. Housing is a huge investment in people’s lives. The least that we can do as a government is make sure that we put in the consumer protections that are available to us to ensure that people have peace of mind – consumers have peace of mind – when it comes to making that significant investment in their life. I think that this bill does hit the right note, and I commend it to the house.

Martin CAMERON (Morwell) (16:06): I rise today to talk on the Building Legislation Amendment (Buyer Protections) Bill 2025. I think one thing that we can all agree on in the chamber here is that the building industry affects every single one of us. If we are a purchaser of a new house, where we need protections and a guarantee that the home that we are signing up for is going to be delivered on time and on budget – and I know that might be a little bit hard in here because that does not happen a lot in here, delivering things on time and on budget – then that is the protection as a consumer that we want, knowing that our hard-earned money going into our new home has some protections and some regulations around it, which is fine.

On the flip side also, for the builders or the people that are in the building trade – whether it be the builder, a plumber, an electrician, a tiler, a waterproofer, a concreter or a bricklayer who is put along on the journey – we need to make sure that regulations and laws that are introduced in this place do not have unintended consequences further down the track. I have seen it before, since I have been here in Parliament, with the shutting of the timber industry. One of the things that was not taken into consideration was the impact on the white paper industry at Maryvale. We need to make sure if we are changing laws and regulations in our building codes and our building industry that down the track it does not affect the builders that we need to build all these houses.

The government has an agenda to build a lot of houses throughout Victoria to give the people of Victoria the opportunity to own their own home. But as your good self said before, Acting Speaker Farnham, the builders that we do have in this state – and not only the builders; I also talk to the plumbing fraternity – are at a stage where, with more regulation and more legislation that we change to make it a harder place to work in and to protect the consumer, it really makes it hard on them to deliver a product which is affordable but also where they know, once that house has been delivered, that they are not on a sling for 10 years, wondering if somebody is going to bring up a defect against them in a house that they have built that may not be their fault. If it is their fault and they have been a dodgy builder, as we have spoken about in the chamber, well, they should face the full letter of the law and the regulations. It is the ones who are the smaller builders, not the high-volume builders, that are maybe building half a dozen houses for the year who we need to make sure still want to work in the building area, so we can supply these particular houses for every single mum and dad that wants to build and buy a house in Victoria.

There are two sides to the equation. You can see merit in protecting the consumer. As MPs on the other side have said, we all get people coming through our doors and writing emails to us who have been on the side of a collapse of a volume builder.

That is no good at all, but we need to make sure if we are changing these laws to protect them that we are not pushing passionate builders and tradespeople to the point where they want to walk away from what they love and what they want to do, and that is build and provide houses for the people of Victoria. If they walk away, and I am talking about the older generation who are probably late 40s into their mid-50s, they are thinking to themselves and weighing these new laws that are coming up of having to have 10 years of insurances. It just costs money to be able to do that, and they have got to weigh up whether it is still worthwhile being in the building game. This core group that I talk of in their mid-40s to mid-50s are the ones that are training and educating our next wave of tradies in the building trade to be able to move forward and gear themselves up to take over and continue to build housing for Victoria – and we do need housing. Whether it be new builds or we are renovating houses, we need to make sure that we are protecting everybody, not just individuals but protecting everybody across the board, because if we have a thousand builders walk away in the next couple of years because it all gets too hard, who is going to build our houses? Then we do have a housing crisis. So we need to make sure that we are dotting all the i’s and crossing all the t’s, that we are not opening up Pandora’s box down the track.

I have spent a lot of time – a lifetime, as have you, Acting Speaker Farnham – in the building trade, and when you do talk to builders they have got their materials bill they have got to pay, they pay wages for their employees, they are paying insurances and they are paying WorkCover. It just keeps mounting and mounting and mounting. The pressure on the workforce itself is extending all the time, so we need to make sure that we do not overload that part in this legislation that we are putting in, and that there are some protections that the builders, plumbers and electricians can see are worthwhile.

I will take on the point for the Victorian Building Authority, and the VBA is the plumbing part for us. I was talking to some plumbers a week ago and talking about the VBA. The VBA currently do have laws with which they can prosecute plumbers, and they have people that go out and are meant to check workmanship. If they are doing drains in the ground, your sewer drains or your stormwater drains, the VBA are meant to go out and check those drains. It is a lottery, though. You self-certify at the moment as a plumber, but you can get audited and it can be a random audit. But I think every single plumber in regional Victoria probably thinks, ‘You know what, we’re not going to get audited,’ and that is where the issue lies. We have the body there. We need to make sure that they have got the funding that they need to be able to go out and make sure plumbers are doing the right thing, that, if it is on the building code side, the building operators are under pressure that they may have someone show up and check their workmanship. Even things like having the right insulation in your walls – once you have got the plaster up, if they come around, they do not know exactly what is in the wall. So there needs to be a set process that we follow. We are trying to churn over so many houses, but we lose that governing body to make sure that we are doing it right.

Ninety per cent of the people are doing it right and can self-regulate; it is the 10 per cent, the cowboys, that we need to pull into line, but we need to pull them into line in a way that does not affect the good guys that are doing the right thing. We need to make sure that unintended consequences do not go too far and these good people walk away from the industry.

One of the big things that I saw when I was plumbing and which was a huge cost to builders and insurance was the waterproofing. You have your bathroom put in – I think everybody would have watched The Block where they have that mad rush at midnight when they are trying to waterproof the bathroom so it can be tiled over the next day. That is an incredible pinch point in the building industry, and it is not being done right at the moment. A lot do it right, but a lot just do not do it to the letter of the law, and that is where it costs the building fraternity, it costs the insurers, it costs me and it costs everybody, with insurance premiums going through the roof.

We are opposing this bill, not because we do not think we need to protect people building their first home but because we need to remove that unintended consequence and be level-headed right across the bill.

Nina TAYLOR (Albert Park) (16:16): I am very pleased to speak on these very important reforms, and I will acknowledge that it has been a very challenging time for the building and construction industry. No-one is seeking here to cast aspersions on builders who do the right thing. My parents had a number of renos over the years, and most of the builders did a fantastic job. We only had one who did not behave in the best manner, I have to say, and my mum had to get someone else to complete the job, so that was not so satisfactory. That was certainly very disappointing for her. But I should say, thinking about buying or building a new home is a massive decision, one of the biggest decisions you could make in your life, and at a minimum everyone would want to think it would be delivered in good working order and fit for purpose, so that all that money for costs, significant or otherwise, does not go down the drain. That impact on your dreams, the delays and all the ramifications that can occur, and also the negativity that can then relay back to the building and construction industry as a consequence is not good for anyone.

I want to also acknowledge a point that has been raised in the chamber, quite rightly, that under the current circumstances – that is, pre this bill being passed – consumers are bumped around a number of bureaucratic bodies which were built with the best intentions but nevertheless make it rather complex and onerous in terms of being able to seek rectification when works are not delivered to a satisfactory level. I should say further, in seeking to allay some of the concerns that have been raised in the chamber, the integrated Building and Plumbing Commission (BPC), which is designed to be a one-stop shop, will have tough new powers, including for enforcement, which is particularly important because the imperative for this legislation – and I am stating the obvious – is that we really must boost confidence in the industry and therefore consumers have to see that outcomes are delivered and that there are appropriate levers that do take effect and deliver the desired outcome.

Simply sitting on our hands and hoping for a better outcome is not going to going to cut it obviously, which is why we are bringing about what I have to say – and I think there is a risk of diminishing the significance of these reforms – rather intense reforms for all the right reasons. I would have thought that expecting a builder to be able to deliver a fair and reasonable outcome in terms of what has been put forward to them as part of a contractual arrangement – that is, a new home – should be a reasonable request and therefore expecting them to live up to that is not unreasonable, which would be the corollary or the counterargument there.

Bearing in mind that it is, pre this bill being passed, a complex journey, one would certainly hope that those opposite would see the need at a minimum to make the pathway for Victorian consumers far more straightforward and fair to ensure that all sides – that is, the builder and the consumer – get the best possible outcome.

I note that there have been concerns raised in the chamber with regard to whether this would be too onerous for builders. I am going to zone in on a specific point – that is that it is alleged that the BPC powers to suspend builders with minimal evidence are effectively creating a regulatory system where building companies are guilty until proven innocent. Can I emphasise that is absolutely the opposite of what we are seeking or what the bill will give effect to. The BPC, like all regulatory entities, will be required to act with integrity, fairness and the expertise that Victorians rightly expect of their regulatory institutions. The bill also does not mean that the BPC will be able to make rectification orders against any type of complaint. In the first instance, the regulator will check whether an attempt has been made by the owner to resolve the matter with the builder. That is a really important and fundamental element in the process. Complaints will then be triaged and the regulator will undertake an assessment, which could include site inspections to determine whether the complaint constitutes noncompliance or defective or incomplete work.

Any decisions made by the regulator can be contested by the builder at VCAT. I think we have to see the purposive element here, rather than cynicism. It is fair and reasonable, though, in the debate for there be rigour and for these elements be queried in the chamber. I am not patronising that particular query. I am just saying that what the bill does is to stop VCAT and other arbitration bodies from being used as a delaying tactic by bad faith operators, and you can see the delicate nuance there. It is delicate but nevertheless important. The bill does not deny anyone due process. The bill merely tips the balance of power back towards protecting consumers rather than rewarding unscrupulous operators.

The other allegation that has perhaps been put forward is that the government is transitioning to a state-managed insurance system to kill competition and raise costs for consumers, allowing BPC to become an unchecked revenue-raiser once it is established. I am just putting that claim out there. I must say that is nothing more than spin. That is absolutely not the case. What is costly for consumers is hundreds of dollars spent on legal fees. We know that any legal processes, however correct and appropriate they may be, are emotional; they are deeply stressful. No matter what, when they enter a legal process, inevitably, nine times out of 10, it is going to be a pretty strenuous process for people to go through. What is costly for consumers is hundreds of dollars spent on legal fees, repairs, relocation and all the other perils caused by dodgy building work. First-resort insurance means that a registered builder can be held accountable for any defective or noncompliant building work rather than these costs being passed on to all policyholders through higher premiums and to individual consumers through out-of-pocket costs. We know the danger in higher and higher premiums being worn by the many. If you are looking at builders and their longevity in the industry, these can be the more onerous elements that certainly have been considered and factored into the reforms that we are bringing about today.

Another point that I have got just enough time to speak to as well is on the alleged claim of ‘Oh, how much have you consulted with industry?’ The Department of Transport and Planning have consulted with a range of industry stakeholders. This included Master Builders Victoria – and I know there are various opinions on this matter, and that is absolutely fine; that is what debate is about – the Housing Industry Association, unions and consumers. They have engaged consistently and in good faith with industry groups, and certainly the government will continue to work with and listen to industry stakeholders as the legislative process unfolds, but no apologies are going to be made on this side for standing up for Victorian consumers. At the end of the day, is it too much to expect a reasonable build for people? They put the good money in and have a contractual relationship. Is it not reasonable to expect a fair delivery at the end of the day, which is the new build that they have probably spent many, many years saving for? I would ask the opposition, when we are looking at this legislation, to revise their current position and think about Victorian consumers and think about the imperative to deliver on tougher laws and enforcement and to make sure that there are appropriate mechanisms in place so that we do not have the disappointing – and let me say ‘disappointing’ is probably understating it – devastating consequence when people put their life savings in and have their plans and everything in place, only to find that the build is not delivered in a satisfactory way.

That is not an all-encompassing statement. There is a spectrum of course when you are talking about defects in a build, and there have been the caveats, which I have listed to date, which protect the builder, that they have mechanisms that they can undertake as well. So I would hope that in good confidence the opposition would give credence to the very valuable reforms that are being brought about here today in the interests of Victorian consumers, because at the end of the day it is better for the builders as well because their reputations need to be protected, and part of that is having appropriate mechanisms in place that give confidence to Victorians that this industry is appropriately regulated.

Cindy McLEISH (Eildon) (16:26): I rise to make a contribution on the Building Legislation Amendment (Buyer Protections) Bill 2025. I guess at the outset the importance here is protecting the buyers of homes, because we have seen a lot of things go pear-shaped, and we have seen the government act not very quickly, and in fact very slowly, and let things get right out of hand. The bill before us amends the Building Act 1993, the Domestic Building Contracts Act 1995, the Subdivision Act 1988, the Sale of Land Act 1962 and the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal Act 1998. There was an amendment, and I will come back to the amendment a little bit later because it is actually quite interesting the way that this amendment came about.

We all know that the system is broken and the system needs a lot more work to fix it. We have seen consumers that have been let down, with enormous amounts really. If we think about it, as others have, buying a home is a big deal and building a home is a big deal. For most people that will be the biggest investment they ever make. They are parting with a lot of money, and they have to typically borrow a lot of money. That in itself is quite stressful, so they would like to know – they would like to be assured – that when things do not go right there are mechanisms in place to help protect them and, sadly, that has not been the case. We know the government has failed in this area particularly, and as I said that system is broken and does need reform.

It is an aspiration of people. People grow up and want to move out of home and buy their own home. People come from overseas and also want to buy their own homes. And so, you know, there is an enormous amount of investment in new homes and new suburban developments. We have seen people have their dreams destroyed through the collapse of Porter Davis and Montego Homes. With Montego Homes, I think there were 50 homebuyers that were impacted, and we had to call on the Premier again to try and extend the liquidated builders customer support payments scheme for home builder insolvencies. We needed to call on them to extend that because people were left high and dry.

We know the regulator has failed in its duties, and the government have seen that and have to act to do something. But they also want to crack down on dodgy builders, and it is important that we get the enforcement and the regulation right as well as we do not want dodgy builders in the system. Now, the bill itself does not have a lot of friends in the industry, and I will touch on the bill because ultimately we are going to have the Victorian Building Authority being rebranded to the Building and Plumbing Commission. I note that when there have been independent reports handed down that the government have said they want a more powerful watchdog with greater powers to tackle substandard building work. We certainly do need to crack down on that, but equally we need to make sure that we have an enforcement and a regulatory system that actually works. We need to make sure that dodgy builders are dealt with as well as the regulator doing the job that it should be doing, and it is important that we have good contracts in place and a balance between the consumer and supplier.

Now, there are a lot of disputes with building homes and renovating or all sorts of things that happen. We will all know of them. We have seen them, and we have probably been subject to them. Some of them are large and some of them are small.

I think we just have to have a look at the annex to see some of the recurring issues that need to be dealt with out there – the constant leaks and the carpets that are just rotting because there have been some building defects. It is seeming to take a very long time to have those rectified. I am not privy to the discussions at the higher levels that may be looking at that, but I know that we have something at a larger scale. We could have something with blocks of flats that could be even bigger. In fact I have had something with a block of flats one time – one of the cupboards did not open because the design was poor and the workmanship was poor. But sometimes things can be small-scale as well.

I want to mention a few of the VBA failures, which must be addressed. There was an independent review. In 2023 the CEO thought things were not going quite right. She was new and she commissioned an independent review of the VBA, which was quite damning, by Weir Legal and Consulting. The complaints handling process by the VBA was exceptionally poor, and they found that there was unethical conduct. This is dreadfully stressful when you have people that are looking at losing significant savings, whether they are their life savings or not. We and they need to know that an institution, a regulator like the VBA, is there to help them. The concern that was uncovered was that they lacked empathy and they let people down over a long period of time. I do worry that with the rebranding, the rebadging, of the VBA there needs to be a huge cultural shift in the way they do business happening at the same time.

I think the members opposite, whilst they might be saying that they are concerned about victims now, at the time let regulations slide and they were silent about that. So I think they need to take a good look at themselves as well, because when you have got a regulator not doing the job to support those that have been victims of shoddy workmanship, for example, or somebody becoming insolvent or even dying, it leaves them a bit high and dry. They need to have that protection in place.

I want to just mention the developer bond scheme. The second-reading speech referred to the new financial protection for consumers through the developer bond scheme for apartments with a rise in storeys of more than three. It is interesting that the second-reading speech had a different figure to what was in the bill, so we had to have the minister put an amendment today to match the two up. I have heard the members of the government saying that it was a printing error. You do not make a printing error like that. You send something off to be printed and it does not miraculously change a 3 to a 2 or a 2 to 3. That does not happen. It is an error. The government obviously wanted to have 3 per cent, and they have been haggled down to 2 per cent. They have not done their homework, their due diligence, or dotted all the i’s and crossed the t’s. We know that they wanted it to be higher, but it is 2 per cent now. There are concerns that this is going to add 2 per cent to the sale price of properties, and there is concern that it has to be paid prior to occupancy certificates being issued.

I want to mention the defects and the warranty. It is pretty extraordinary to have 10 years. Ten years is a long time in anyone’s book for somebody to come back about cracked grout, a door rub or a squeaky floor. Currently ‘minor defects’ is defined, but it should be defined here as well and it is not. I do not think that is good enough. We have heard earlier from speakers that warranties on products are not for 10 years. Warranties on products are for seven years, and really that should align, because you are going to have unnecessary disputes about something that may be related to a product. We need to encourage and keep small builders in the business. We need do not want them to exit, because we rely on the small builders. These are small businesses as well. We do not want the dodgy ones, but we absolutely want to have those that are quite reputable.

I want mention also what is going to be rolled into the new Building and Plumbing Commission.

We will have the VBA, eventually the Victorian Managed Insurance Authority and the domestic building dispute resolution. We have got a few issues with the VMIA, and I hope this all gets sorted out because essentially they were trading while insolvent a few years ago. They are currently in negative equity, and at 30 June their insurance funding ratio was 99.8 per cent. They need to be in the range of 100 to 144. They have had to have a capital management plan designed to help them get back into the preferred range. So whether or not they pull out the domestic building insurance operations as part of that capital management plan, that will help get them back on their feet. But there is a real concern here with the VBA. We have had a growth in domestic building insurance claims, and the premium itself went up in 2023–24 by 53 per cent. That is $1500 on a $500,000 home. That is on top of the previous year’s 43 per cent increase. This is ultimately passed on to the insurers, and I am very concerned about the current rates by which these have gone up. I know that a year ago the operations of the VMIA had 1300 to deal with. They had 465 claims issued on the day Porter Davis went into liquidation. The Ombudsman and the Auditor-General have been involved as well, which is a concern.

Bronwyn HALFPENNY (Thomastown) (16:36): I am very pleased to stand here and make a contribution in support of the Building Legislation Amendment (Buyer Protections) Bill 2025. As the name suggests, this is actually about providing buyer protection, particularly for in most cases those that are buying new homes, who are often first home buyers and young people in our society. I am really very, very strongly in support of making sure that consumers – home owners – get the protection that they need in order to purchase a house, which is often the biggest investment anyone will make in their life. Also when we are talking at the moment of the sad state of affairs where there is not enough home affordability, we have many people who have been locked out of home ownership and required to continue to rent, and of course rents are also going up at a rapid rate.

So this legislation really is about providing protection for homebuyers, and it is about tipping the scales just that little bit further into the area where there is greater protection for those purchasing a house. I am a little bit confused, because I believe the Liberals are actually opposing these laws. There is talk about, ‘There hasn’t been consultation.’ I listened to a lot of first home buyers and people that are buying new homes, because in the electorate of Thomastown we have got lots of new estates – Lyndarum, Ellery, Rathdowne and Amber estates – and those people are the ones telling me how terrible the experience is that they have had when purchasing homes because of the lack of strong protections around their purchases and their houses when they have a whole lot of different defects. They are not able to pursue builders and developers properly in order to have those defects rectified. As well, particularly when it comes to timely rectification, most of the power is with the builder or developer, who can drag out the complaints and concerns of consumers and home owners for years in the courts seeking reviews and not actually doing what the right thing is, and that is making good the errors and the problems and the faults that are in people’s homes. So this legislation is about protecting the consumer and it is giving just that little bit more back to the consumer, where really in the past all the power has been with the builder and the developer, and the consumer has not been able to get many of the things fixed in their home that need to be fixed.

I know from talking to the local SES members in the area just at a recent community event, they were telling me about when there are things like strong winds and flooding and rain, often when they are being called out to homes to help secure, for example, roofs that are not on properly, or flooding because of drainage that is not working, it is actually a fault with the building of that house that is causing the consequential damage to that property – not just the weather event that may have started it, but the damage has really been caused by a lot of faulty workmanship and building.

This legislation is about trying to strengthen protections, and in a way the responsibilities and obligations are not changing for builders and developers under this legislation. It is more about ensuring that they have to follow through and carry through with those obligations and responsibilities that they sign up to when they are building a house for a homebuyer. This is what this legislation is about. There are four areas that I want to talk about that this legislation is changing, as I said, not so much to change the obligations of builders and developers but more about ensuring that they carry through on those responsibilities and obligations – for example, integrated regulation. Instead of having different areas and categories where people have to go to have developers or builders make good on the property that they have purchased – rather than having to go to, say, Consumer Affairs Victoria or to the Victorian Building Authority or to the plumbing commission – the idea of this legislation is to have an integrated regulator so the consumer is not being bounced between one authority and another. They go to one place, and it is that place that addresses their concerns and tries to assist and help with whatever the dispute is or whatever requirement the consumer has in terms of having faults and defects fixed within the property that they have purchased.

As I said before, it seems a little bit confusing that on one hand I believe the Liberal–National Party opposition are opposing this legislation, but when you hear, for example, the speaker just before me, it almost sounded like they were supporting the registration and strengthening of protections for consumers who are purchasing their home. While saying that they support that, they are also opposing and nitpicking at areas to look as if they are not letting down consumers, which we believe they are by not supporting this legislation, and using that as an excuse in their support for builders and developers. I know, for example, Acting Speaker Farnham you raised concern about the building industry going under or crashing because of this legislation. If a builder is doing the right thing and wanting to build a good quality home before the person that has purchased off them, then they should not be afraid of this legislative change.

As I said, the integrated regulator is to ensure that people are not being moved from one place to another in order to get their problem dealt with and sorted out. The other issue is the rectification orders. The legislation we are discussing here is about giving more power to the regulator to issue rectification orders so that any problems, faults and defects have to be fixed. They could be made whether the person has already moved into the home or before then. There ought not be a difference in terms of making sure that a builder or developer has to fix the problem of a new house, and that is not going to be a problem that happens just because a person has moved in for a day or two, but rather it is about making sure that the time a person moves in does not then mean that the obligations of the builder or developer are no longer there just because of that point in time.

When looking at other parts of the legislation, for example, there is the bond scheme. This is about ensuring that developers provide a bond of up to 2 per cent of the total construction cost, and that is there as a surety, just like a renter. If you move into a home and you are renting, you pay a bond to ensure that you look after that property, and any damage caused by you can be subtracted from that bond to have it fixed.

It is the same thing with the developer bond scheme. If you build a house, you put a bond there so that if, after the home owner moves in, there is an issue and it cannot be sorted in other ways, the bond scheme will provide cover for rectifying that problem or that fault. Again, it is not a huge issue. It happens in other industries and in other areas of the housing industry, such as when renting. I understand that while there is not a time limit put into the legislation, that of course will happen within the regulations, which is the right place to develop things around timelines and the smaller bits and pieces that are required, whereas the legislation provides the overarching amount.

For too long there have been, and we have seen it over the last few years, too many things happen and go wrong in the housing industry that have caused heartache and distress for home owners. Whether it was the collapse of Porter Davis or whether it was the cladding that had to be rectified because it was a fire risk, those are all things that we need to make sure do not happen again.

Jess WILSON (Kew) (16:46): I too rise to speak on the Building Legislation Amendment (Buyer Protections) Bill 2025. I note from the outset that this is a bill that supposedly looks to improve consumer protection when it comes to the building of new homes. We have seen over recent times in Victoria, and particularly over recent years when I held the portfolio of Shadow Minister for Home Ownership and Housing Affordability, the collapse of some major home builders here in Victoria, leaving many Victorians without their home and without their deposit which they had saved for for many, many years and had worked very hard to save for – aspirational Victorians looking to buy their own home – and left stranded, as a result of the collapse of these major home builders.

We have heard discussions today in particular about the collapse of Porter Davis, at the time leaving thousands of Victorians without their deposit or with half-built homes. This bill from those opposite appears to be the consequence of dodgy builders, not just Porter Davis but of course Hallbury Homes and Apex Homes at the time. Whilst we need to stamp out the practices undertaken by dodgy builders, what is often missed in the debate is that it has actually been a regulatory requirement and a legislative requirement for many, many years that these builders take out domestic building insurance when new home buyers looking to build their own homes sign contracts. That was not happening under the previous scheme. That was not happening under the watch of the Victorian Building Authority (VBA). That is because that organisation was a toothless tiger. It was not doing its job. It was failing to make sure that it was enforcing the laws that were already in place, laws that the previous coalition government put in place, in terms of making sure that home builders – those family companies and those large builders – made sure that they took out domestic building insurance when homebuyers were signing contracts.

As a result of the fact that the VBA was not doing its job under the watch of this government, thousands of Victorians were left with half-built homes, stranded in terms of how those homes would be completed and unsure of whether those homes would ever be completed. Increasingly what we saw was that many of those aspiring home owners were left with their deposits lost. There was no ability for them to claim back their deposits. It was only as a result of working with those families and working with those consumers that were left stranded without their deposits that the opposition was able to place pressure on the government to deliver a redress scheme for those homebuyers. Over that period I spoke to many, many families that had been affected by the collapse of these major builders – the collapse of Porter Davis, Hallbury Homes and Apex Homes – and the common theme throughout was the fact that the VBA and of course the Victorian Managed Insurance Authority, which are the subject of the bill before us today, were not capable of doing their job. Time and time again we heard the fact that the VMIA was not processing the claims – that these claims were being drawn out and drawn out – and they could not even get a response from the state insurer.

This bill today looks to transfer the domestic building insurance operations of the VMIA and the operations related to that under Domestic Building Dispute Resolution Victoria to the new Victorian Building Authority. The VMIA is an agency that has been in financial strife for many, many years. It is the agency that we have seen time and time again fail to deliver claims for Victorians. But it should come as no surprise that this is the case, because we have seen time and time again the fact that the VMIA has reported an operating loss – an operating loss last year of $98.7 million – and on top of that the agency now has $476 million in negative equity.

We on this side of the house know that that operating loss in particular is a direct result of the number of claims that have been put in to the VMIA as the result of the collapse of these major home builders, Porter Davis in particular. What does that mean for Victorians? What does that mean for consumers – consumers that, we are hearing from those opposite, are the people who should be the focus of this bill? It means that they are now facing higher premiums as a result of the VMIA being in the financial position that it is. We saw last year that in 2023 domestic building insurance premiums rose by an average of 53 per cent. On a $500,000 home that is more than a $1500 increase in the DBI premium. That is off the back of, just 11 months earlier, the government putting in place a 43 per cent increase to DBI premiums. So year on year, at a time when we have seen domestic building insurance be so, so important because of the collapse of these major home builders, the government under this Premier is not able to manage the finances of this agency, and the direct consequence of that is we are going to put it back onto aspiring home owners.

Let us be very clear about the fact that these major home builders have collapsed largely as a consequence of this state’s Big Build and the inflationary impact of that Big Build. When you have a situation of $50 billion of cost blowouts on these major projects, the flowthrough consequences to the home building industry are on stark display. We hear regularly from builders trying to build homes about the fact that they cannot access affordable supplies and affordable labour. What does that mean? That means that it pushes up the cost of housing. Add on top of that that 40 per cent of the cost of a new house and land package in Victoria is taxes, fees and charges – 40 per cent, as a direct result of the government imposing taxes, fees and charges on new home and land packages on aspiring home owners here in Victoria.

This government likes to talk a big game when it comes to housing in Victoria. We saw their housing statement, released about 18 months ago, with its big target of building 80,000 new homes each and every year, 800,000 over the decade. Well, they have had to walk back that commitment. They have had to walk back the fact that they were going to build 80,000 more homes each and every year for aspiring home owners. But what was very, very clear in that housing statement at the time was that it mentioned housing affordability and home ownership once. This is not a government that actually believes in home ownership. In fact the former Premier, as we all know, said that he thinks that Victorians prefer to rent – that young people in this state do not want to own their own home.

What we know is that young Victorians do want to own a piece of this great state. They do want to own their own home, but they simply do not think it will ever be possible. We know the dream of home ownership is getting further and further out of reach because of this government. This government’s answer to the housing problem is to put more taxes in place and to make it harder by increasing DBI premiums. Instead of actually enforcing the law, making sure that builders are doing what is required under legislation, under regulation, they mismanage it. They mismanage it to the point that it becomes the problem for Victorians, and insurance premiums go up.

It is no different when it comes to the enforcement of the VBA, and we have seen the terrible things that have occurred under the VBA’s watch. Just a couple of years ago the VBA were doing inspections via iPhones. That was how they were making sure that the defects in Victorian homes were being managed and being enforced – through iPhones. This is an agency that is not delivering for Victorians and has not delivered for Victorians, and the answer from this government once again is to just change the name.

Victorians have absolutely lost any hope under this government of ever being able to own their own homes. Under the housing statement and under the various pieces of legislation that come into this place week after week there is nothing that is actually driving down the cost of housing in this state. In fact in the piece of legislation before us we see a 2 per cent bond on high-rise. That is the only thing this government actually intends to build, and yet again they are pushing up the cost. This government cannot deliver for young Victorians that want to own their own homes. The dream of home ownership in this state is absolutely failing under the Allan Labor government.

Iwan WALTERS (Greenvale) (16:56): As I said in my contribution on the government business program this morning, I have been looking forward to speaking on this bill, because in very stark contrast to the member for Kew in her contribution, I think it is a bill which addresses some of the profound concerns that residents in my community have about failures within the domestic construction sector, which many residents have shared with me. It is always interesting to see how many mothers and fathers success in this place has, and it is a revelation to me to find that the member for Kew and others are responsible for the work that this government undertook to ensure that people affected by the collapse of Porter Davis were able to get recourse through the Victorian Managed Insurance Authority (VMIA) to ensure that they were covered and were able to access that insurance recourse. I think it is credit to the hard work of the then Assistant Treasurer and other ministers who listened to advocacy from those on this side of the house and sought to implement reforms and changes which make a real difference to people’s lives.

This bill I think is a good bill, because it will establish a stronger regulatory model to protect consumers. In doing so it will transfer oversight of domestic building dispute resolution to the Victorian Building Authority, transfer domestic building insurance arrangements from the VMIA to the VBA and equip the VBA with enforcement powers to order the rectification of noncompliant, defective or incomplete building work, including after the point at which an occupancy permit has been issued.

Acting Speaker Farnham, when you had your member for Narracan hat on I listened very carefully to your contribution, and I value the perspective that people like you and the member for Morwell who have worked in the construction industry bring to this place and the wealth of experience you have got. I disagree with your characterisation of the bill in both its design and its likely effects, but I think it is important that we have a profusion of perspectives in any debate, and I think it is valuable to have that. But I think your contribution, as many others did, spoke to the importance of the construction sector within our state, particularly in the context of a growing state where the vast majority of builders are doing the right thing. In fact it is those builders who suffer as a consequence of the shonks, the cowboys and the crims, perhaps as much as the consumers who are left high and dry as a consequence of those nefarious actions. Cumulatively it does really undermine confidence and trust in the housing market. To the extent that housing is like any other market, the confidence of actors and the de-risking of decisions that they make and the confidence and the trust that they have in other agents within that market is paramount.

We have had instances of market failure within the housing sector. I have seen that firsthand when I have been supporting, frankly, far too many of my constituents who have suffered loss and hardship as a consequence of very unethical and unscrupulous conduct by dodgy contractors as they have tried to build a home for their family. I have seen and I have heard their feedback and their really heart-rending accounts of having dreams destroyed and having lost hundreds of thousands of dollars through no fault of their own.

The member for Ovens Valley earlier talked about this legislation making it harder for Victorians to get a home. Other members on the other side have done similarly. I would invite those members to speak with my constituents and to understand that what has made it harder for them to get a home is not having recourse when dodgy builders have shafted them, have taken their money and not delivered and not bought insurance as required. The member for Kew talked about that being a legal obligation; it has been, but it has not been happening and there has been no adequate recourse for consumers in the market to get redress for that or when those builders have done a botched job that they have been refused to rectify, because what good is a home that you have paid for if it is not watertight, if it is not structurally sound, if it is not safe to live in?

These are the most expensive decisions that consumers will make in their lives, but the problems that we are seeking to address in this bill I do think at a certain level completely undermine the entire housing market. The Leader of the Opposition has spoken about his personal experience of when this happened to him and his family, and I do not bring this up to make light of it in any sense – I think it speaks to how profound and broad-based this issue can be – but when there is an opportunity for those opposite to do something about those problems, they oppose it. I think that is a profound shame, because if we do not get to the heart of these challenges, if we do not increase or rectify the erosion of trust and the heightened risk that purchasers and participants in the housing market carry as a result of uncertainty about the quality of the work that is being done or their capacity to get recourse if there are issues that require rectification, then what we will see is exactly what has been playing out in the apartment sector in Melbourne: collapsing values, fewer starts, fewer completions and, ultimately, fewer houses. These are not abstract issues.

There is a significant erosion of capital value, particularly in off-the-plan apartments which have been built in Melbourne over the last decade or so, in significant part because second and subsequent purchasers of those apartments within those buildings can have no confidence that the buildings into which they are buying are safe, are watertight and are structurally sound. That is a profound hindrance to our capacity as a state and as a market to deliver the homes which are required. We need to ensure a functioning market with appropriate levels of regulation that neither unduly hinder construction activity nor expose participants to excessive levels of risk, because it is de-risking and it is taking appropriate regulatory action such as that contained within this bill that will inject confidence into the market and assure consumers and indeed my constituents before they make the most expensive purchase of their lives.

There has also been a lot of commentary – I think misleading commentary – about the current state of the VBA, the Victorian Building Authority, whose name will change as a consequence of this bill. There have been very significant reforms to the culture and the leadership of the VBA across the last year or so. I think the new leader of the VBA Anna Cronin has led a significant body of work to improve the culture and the operational effectiveness of the VBA. She is a leader who is respected and very well known across the political spectrum and indeed the industry more broadly.

The point that I wish to turn to now goes to that point about the apartment sector in Victoria and the issues that we have with taller buildings in Melbourne. At present, for buildings of four storeys and above, consumers currently have no financial protection for defective building work. This bill is important because it takes the first steps to making the system fairer by introducing the developer bond scheme. We have seen in too many instances, in both this jurisdiction and others, issues around cladding which have undermined the value and the trust and the confidence that residents have and that subsequent purchasers of those buildings can have in their apartments and in their dwellings. There have been instances in Sydney as well – in the context of the Opal building, for example, where buildings which have been clearly defective both in their construction and subsequently have led owners of apartments in those buildings to be significantly out of cost financially. These multifarious issues are undermining trust and confidence in newer apartment construction. As I said, I do think it is an issue that points towards market failure where there is unknown and in a sense unquantifiable risk pertaining to the design, the safety and the integrity of buildings.

There are profound information asymmetries here as well. Whether it is low-rise developments in my own electorate or high-rise developments in areas like the city and in the activity precincts across suburban Melbourne, there are information asymmetries between what the developer knows and what the purchaser knows. The manifestation of that information asymmetry comes through in the fact that there are significant losses being borne by purchasers who in good faith bought properties or bought dwellings off the plan and are now subsequently making losses when they seek to sell those.

If we are going to have a functioning housing market, one where we optimise the number of starts, the number of completions and ultimately the number of homes to cater to a growing population, consumers need to have confidence in what they are buying. We need to have a regulatory framework that balances the risk being borne by consumers and indeed those who are building homes. As I say, it is the vast majority of hardworking builders who are carrying the can for the actions of a few. It is why this bill, I think, is important. I commend it to the house.

John PESUTTO (Hawthorn) (17:06): I rise to speak on the Building Legislation Amendment (Buyer Protections) Bill 2025. It is another example of this government trying to lead but trying to lead from behind. We are talking in this bill about a risk management system. That is really what we are trying to deal with. We are trying to deal with the problem of risk in the residential construction industry. But no-one, not the minister in the second-reading speech and not any of the speakers on behalf of the government, has actually addressed the key issue in this debate. We are talking about an industry that is on its knees.

The residential construction industry is on its knees. And the evidence for that? Here is one piece of evidence. Victoria has acceded to the dubious honour of being that jurisdiction with the highest number of residential construction insolvencies in the country. In the year to February 2024, we saw 475 construction insolvencies in Victoria. That was in the year to February 2024. In the year to February 2025, that went up to – wait for it – 700. So over 1100 residential construction firms went under over a two-year period. That is 1100. We have got an industry on its knees. We have an industry on its knees because it cannot find the workers it needs. According to the ABS, the Productivity Commission and so many others, residential construction and construction generally face such chronic shortages that by the end of the decade we will need nationally no less than 130,000 construction workers to deliver basic housing targets. That is nationally, so in Victoria we need something like 40,000 extra construction workers between now and the end of the decade. Where are we going to get them?

When we hear about insolvencies, when we hear about workforce issues, where is that featuring in this debate? Because I tell you, you cannot protect consumers. And in fairness to everybody in this chamber, I think we all share that goal. Genuinely, we all share the goal of wanting to protect consumers. But the underlying principle, which is undeniable, is you cannot protect consumers if you do not have an industry that sits on solid foundations, that is vibrant and that is growing. We see that in the number of insolvencies. We see that in the chronic workforce shortages. We saw in the recent year a 21 per cent drop in the number of completed apprenticeships, and those starting also saw a drop. So whether it is people finishing apprenticeships in the construction sector or starting, we are seeing significant drop-offs. That is not a good or healthy sign.

In Victoria over the period December–January, we saw a reduction in approvals for private sector dwellings of 1.2 per cent, and in terms of units we saw a 1.5 per cent drop. Now, that is just in a one-month period. What does that tell us about the health of the very industry this bill is trying to regulate?

Sure, on behalf of consumers it is something we support in principle; of course we do. But this bill comes at a time when there is a complete absence of any kind of leadership or work by this government on how it is going to address those underlying risks. I have heard mentioned in the debate how we address risk, but those are the greatest risks which pose significant financial and consequential harm to home owners who face difficulties when their builders go bust or when they have the misfortune to learn that they have engaged a dodgy builder, which is rarer than it is more common.

The other problem is the bill is being prosecuted in the absence of any discussion about why it costs so much to build a house or a unit in Victoria. We know that every house or unit will comprise in its cost to the tune of about 40 to 45 per cent property taxes and other taxes. The Business Council of Australia has pointed this out. The National Australia Bank, the Commonwealth Bank in its concept report, the Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Ai Group all talk about the comparative high costs of construction in Victoria. You see figures bandied about. The rule of thumb which has attracted a general consensus across this area of debate is that it costs about 30 per cent more to build in Victoria than it does in other jurisdictions. That is a risk. It also takes far too long to build houses and units in Victoria. It can take 18 months, two years or sometimes even longer to deliver a completed product to a home owner so that they can move in and occupy the place they have been dreaming about. It takes too long. Why is that? Too much red tape. That has been noted in report after report. It takes too long.

What has this government, which has been in office for over a decade now, done to reduce the costs of building homes in this state? We saw an interesting report from the Productivity Commission in February, which talked about opportunities to reduce red tape and, interestingly, how innovation can play a role. Prefabricated homes and modular homes, which are built to a high quality these days, can reduce the time it takes to deliver a completed product from 1½ to two years to a matter of weeks and even a short number of months. But where is that in the debate? I tell you all of these things feed into the issue of risk. Many builders will tell you they do their best, but it takes too long. For one reason or another – regulation, taxes, holding costs and the financing costs that builders have to wear – it can take too long. I am not advocating for a particular position on, for example, fixed-price contracts, but they are a challenge when it takes a long time. If there were a way to address that so we could protect consumers obviously but also recognise that builders often go under if it takes too long to deliver a product, and that represents a significant risk.

I start with those propositions because I do firmly believe you cannot protect consumers if the foundations of the industry we are trying to regulate better have been corroded by these issues – delays, taxes, workforce issues. They can all be addressed, but there are no solutions being offered up in the debate from the government or its speakers today. It is all about unfairly and pejoratively depicting the industry as full of dodgy builders, and that is just wrong. It is unfair. We want to build this industry up, because then you can deal with the regulation that is best placed to address those risks. I support the reasoned amendment that has been moved. I say further that in the government briefing I particularly asked those speaking on behalf of the government about the actuarial impacts of these changes for consumers. What are the additional costs? How much is it going to add? We know organisations like Master Builders Victoria estimate that these changes cumulatively will add about $30,000 to the price of a home. That is a lot of money, yet we have not been advised about other actuarial impacts on housing costs and building costs because of this bill.

It will cost a lot of money, and if the statutory scheme is to be run anything like WorkCover has been run watch out, because we will see sizeable and often for builders intolerable increases in premiums from year to year. So we think it is very fair to be sceptical about how well this system will be run.

Also, as others have pointed out – and I certainly firmly believe this and have said this on many occasions over the last year or so – both the Victorian Building Authority and the Victorian Managed Insurance Authority have as part of their fundamental statutory mandates obligations to manage risk, assess risk and come up with measures to deal with risk. That has always been there. So why have there been such catastrophic failures? Porter Davis Homes and all of the other insolvencies that we have seen over the last 18 months or so could have been avoided if the existing institutions under existing laws had simply discharged their basic responsibilities to manage risk. We have seen them hopelessly run, running cumulative operating losses where governments have to bail them out effectively.

I should point out in concluding that the government was on notice about the precarious financial position and failure to discharge basic obligations by both bodies for nearly two years and did nothing about it. So I support the amendments which have been moved by the member for Polwarth, and I say to the government: whilst we all share, I think, the ultimate goal of protecting consumers, you cannot achieve that if you do not address the underlying risks which are seriously threatening the viability of residential construction.

Alison MARCHANT (Bellarine) (17:16): It is great to rise and speak to the Building Legislation Amendment (Buyer Protections) Bill 2025, and it is great to talk again in this place around building legislation. I have spoken a couple of times on this topic, and that is because we have done some significant reforms in this space. We are undertaking these reforms to put consumers at the centre and to enhance protections for them when they are embarking on their building journey or renovating their homes. By introducing this bill today we do mark another pivotal step towards ensuring that those home owners receive the protections that they need, deserve and rightly expect when they are building or renovating.

It is a significant milestone for anyone to undertake to build or renovate. I myself have renovated a couple of renovator’s delights that we have bought. I have done them up, put new kitchens in them and really enjoyed the process actually. Luckily I have a hubby that is quite handy at doing renovations, but we have also just embarked on the first time we have ever built. We had a private builder – an incredible builder that talked us through the whole process from start to finish – and it was a really seamless and not a stressful process at all. Everyone said, ‘Oh my goodness you’re building, it will be the worst time of your life.’ It was actually the most enjoyable, having a terrific builder who stepped us through the process but also created a beautiful and wonderful home for us. I do not think anyone on this side has actually classified the whole industry as being full of dodgy builders. That is not what we have said on this side. This bill is about targeting dodgy builders, but we know that the majority of the builders here in Victoria do build wonderful homes for families. However, that is not to say that there are not challenges. When construction does fall short there need to be those protections and avenues that consumers can access to make sure that they have the end product that they were rightly expecting.

I would like to talk a little bit about what the bill will do. We as a government announced that we would establish the Building and Plumbing Commission. This would be a robust regulatory body designed to oversee the building and plumbing industry across the whole state. A new commission is about consolidating the regulation, the insurance and the disputes into a single agency and streamlining that. By centralising these aspects the commission aims to provide a more cohesive and efficient approach to safeguarding home owners and their interests. Why did we need to do this? This is about implementing reforms to put consumers at the heart and uphold their rights. We wanted to ensure accountability. It was about holding builders and developers to stringent standards and enforcing a culture of accountability. We also wanted to give consumers peace of mind that home owners can embark on a building or renovation project with confidence. When there are disputes, we need to consolidate those functions into a single commission where consumers can go for a really straightforward process, reducing all those bureaucratic hurdles that home owners may face.

This is more than just a policy. We do in this place debate policy and debate bills all the time, but this actually has real-life consequences for Victorians. It is about ensuring that when you have that excitement of building a new home it is not overshadowed with all those challenges. It gives people that peace of mind.

As I have said, this is about building a watchdog, and it gives enforcement powers to the Building and Plumbing Commission. Currently that is all managed by other authorities, including the VBA, the Victorian Building Authority; there are also other responsibilities under the Victorian Managed Insurance Authority, and then we have Domestic Building Dispute Resolution Victoria. By creating this one-stop shop for consumers this will be a lot easier for homebuyers and renovators. It will even be easier for practitioners and builders to have one commission. It is about enforcement as well. If serious defects identified by this commission are not rectified, then the regulator can stop the issuing of occupancy permits or the completion of off-plan sales. It is about ensuring that they have teeth and that they are able to help consumers navigate those complaints that may occur.

The bill also establishes two different types of financial safety net. First will be the first-resort domestic building warranty – that is for buildings three storeys and below – and then the developer bond scheme for buildings more than three storeys high. The first-resort domestic building warranty will allow homebuyers to make a claim when building issues are first identified. Then of course they are not there for consumers to face huge out-of-pocket costs for fixing defects later on. For buildings four storeys or above this bill is about taking the first steps to introduce a fair system. It introduces a developer bond scheme, which is very similar to a rental bond. Under the scheme the developer pays a bond, which is held by the regulator. If serious building issues are not addressed by the developer or the builder, that money can be released to pay for rectification works.

We have all read about, had constituents come to us about or seen in the public media or in the public sphere horrible experiences with builders. I have had constituents who have spoken to me about their experiences. One in their email stated to me that when going through a really difficult time with their builder not only was there the financial pressure that that put on that family but he said the emotional stress was even worse. He felt not just that he had lost his money but that he had lost his dream – that dream to own a home, and a new home. We have seen it before when, after months of searching – it is a process – families or an individual will find a builder who promises to build their dream home. Contracts are signed, foundations are poured and frames are put up. The process starts, and it is the beginning of something very exciting and wonderful for families, but that can turn very quickly. A builder can miss a deadline; work sites can be deserted. If you can get in touch with a dodgy builder, you might hear all the excuses under the sun about what they are doing. You have a home that then has defects all through it – I do not know; roofs may leak and doors might not close – and families are left with nowhere to go and their dream has been absolutely shattered.

We are talking about dodgy builders who deliberately try to cut corners. I am not sure of the reasons why – probably cost cutting. This is why we need consumer protections. This bill is the first step in sweeping an overhaul over the building regulation system – one that, like I said at the start, puts consumers at the centre, not dodgy operators. It does also lay the foundation for a modern, accountable industry where builders who cut corners have nowhere to hide.

This very much supports an industry that we know is growing in Victoria, and we know we are committed to more housing across the state. We have a big housing agenda. We know most builders do the right thing, and we are very much in support of them. But in the industry there are bad apples. There is always a bad apple in the industry, and they tarnish the profession. They leave families to pay the price, and this is about having protections for our consumers.

This new Building and Plumbing Commission really will consolidate, as I said, the regulation, insurance and disputes into a single entity. This is really to address where consumers are having to navigate so many different systems, so many different agencies. This will put everything together in a one-stop shop, so it will be absolutely more efficient for consumers when they are on that journey if there are challenges that they face. We want people to be able to go on that journey of building their new home with excitement, with protections but also with an understanding that they will get the house that they are expecting and that they have paid for. But if there are issues, then they have a place to go to support them. I commend the bill to the house.

Chris CREWTHER (Mornington) (17:26): I rise today to speak on the Building Legislation Amendment (Buyer Protections) Bill 2025. Some of the main changes being brought forth in this bill include the establishment of a new Building and Plumbing Commission; the shifting of Victoria’s insurance scheme from last resort to first resort, allowing home owners to claim insurance for defects even if their builder is still active; the introduction of rectification orders enforceable for up to 10 years; the requirement of developers of buildings over three storeys to lodge a mandatory bond of 2 per cent; and centralising the roles of insurers, regulators and dispute-resolvers into one bureaucracy, the BPC, giving it unmatched power to penalise builders, issue orders and recover costs.

Overall there are more consumer protections needed in the building industry. One example is at Culcairn Drive in Frankston South, as Acting Speaker Edbrooke would be well aware of, where the developer, the surveyor and the builder were all known to each other and basically signed off on each other’s work and where the residents there have had ongoing issues that have really impacted them to a significant extent. But this Building Legislation Amendment (Buyer Protections) Bill 2025, while introducing consumer protections, also needs to be done right.

I just want to go firstly into some of Labor’s record when it comes to housing and the housing crisis we have at the moment, which will relate to this bill. If we look at the entire housing ecosystem, it is crumbling in terms of both public housing and private housing. In public housing the Victorian Housing Register has ballooned to 65,526 families, a 65 per cent increase in just eight years. We also have families who are escaping domestic violence now needing to wait nearly 20 months, or even more sometimes, for housing. Public housing has declined, with 487 fewer dwellings in the last 12 months alone. In private housing only 61,260 new homes were built in the last year, 34 per cent below Labor’s promise of 80,000 homes annually. Private sector building approvals are now 16 per cent lower than during the peak of the pandemic, and rental availability has collapsed, with 15,600 rental homes lost across Victoria and 10,000 gone in the first three months of this year. Indeed affordable rentals have also halved, from 10.8 per cent in 2018 to just 5.1 per cent in September 2024. This has not been helped by land tax increases, which have seen rental providers going out of the market.

So we do have a situation of increased taxes and sometimes improper or increased regulation that is making it harder for builders to get into the market and stay in the market. At the same time, though, we do need those consumer protections in place, but they need to be balanced and fair for consumers, builders and developers, particularly to encourage and help those builders and developers who are trying to do the right thing. The majority are actually trying to do the right thing, and they are undermined by those builders and developers doing the wrong thing, who are in the minority. But those in the minority can undercut the good builders and the good developers on price, and it can often lead to those good ones going out of the market.

If we look at this bill, we see a centralisation of power and to some extent too much of a loss of builder rights. We have unprecedented reform which centralises, concentrates and consolidates power in the hands of one unelected super-regulator, the Building and Plumbing Commission. This body is purported to be able to regulate the sector, issue penalties, act as the sole insurer, investigate complaints, issue rectification orders and oversee dispute resolution all at once. The separation of powers is gone, with a lack of independent oversight. Under this bill, builders can be issued rectification orders even years after a build is completed; orders can be made without judicial findings, without due process and without a fair opportunity to challenge; and builders cannot sign new contracts while under a rectification order, freezing business. The fourth point is that names are published publicly even before any findings are made or the complaint is withdrawn and disproven. Builders cannot pause a rectification order while appealing to VCAT, and an order still stands and damages are done. Minor complaints can destroy a business overnight, and builders are very scared. While we do need to have these consumer protections in place, we cannot over-regulate to the point where good builders are scared of getting involved and staying in the market altogether. We must protect home owners, but this has to be balanced and grounded in natural justice.

If we look at the impact on builders and housing supply, this bill will potentially push up even further the cost of construction, drive small builders out of the market and make housing even less affordable. This may lead to an environment where risk is high, process is uncertain and builders are guilty until proven innocent. Industry figures are sounding the alarm. Zeher Khalil the TikTok building inspector said:

A lot of builders will go bust because there’ll be a lot of claims …

Scott Challen, a leading voice in the sector, warned:

This regulation will push the price of housing up and it won’t deliver homes faster for people …

Builders are being taxed and blamed in part because of the minority of builders and developers who are, as I mentioned, doing the wrong thing and who are undercutting the good builders and developers on price and more. The 2 per cent developer bond scheme may also be a blow to liquidity and confidence. This bond scheme is a non-refundable cost which may then be passed on to the buyer. Builders may go broke because insolvencies are already predicted to rise by 63 per cent.

The other point I want to raise is the flawed insurance model and bureaucracy under this bill. Under the current system, insurance claims are triggered online in serious cases – when a builder dies, disappears or becomes insolvent. Now a home owner will be able to lodge a claim simply because they allege a defect exists, even if the builder is still trading and willing to rectify the issue. This means that insurance can be triggered before complaint resolution, before VCAT hears a matter and before the builder has a chance to respond. This may be a recipe for systematic abuse, flooding the system with claims and overwhelming the regulator. Who decides whether a builder is liable? The same body that wrote the insurance policy and the same body that investigates complaints, issues penalties, suspends licences and approves payouts. This is a potential textbook conflict of interest with little to no independent oversight or accountability mechanism to prevent bias. The builder will have two choices: accept liability and pay or spend thousands fighting the regulator in VCAT.

Overall the opposition will be opposing this legislation, but with the reasoned amendment from the member for Polwarth, which he spoke on earlier:

That … this house refuses to read this bill a second time until details of the consultation on the Domestic Building Contracts Act 1995, along with any proposed reforms, have been released to the industry.

This is very important because we need to get this bill right. We need to get the balance right. We need to have smart regulation to encourage good builders and developers to build more houses and to do the right thing while at the same time undercutting those who are doing the wrong thing. We cannot have a situation where those doing the right thing are pushed out of the marketplace and then potentially we only have those doing the wrong thing left in the marketplace.

The government has failed to address some of these key underlying issues that I have mentioned in my speech. There is no or little clarity around the contents and obligations in a building contract that are often the root cause of a dispute. VCAT is still the ultimate umpire, which is poorly funded and under-resourced, leading to issues with claims.

The future renaming of VBA to BPC may equal changing the process that essentially leaves all processes and personnel who currently oversee the management of the construction industry in place, and the 10-year defect liability responsibility on builders is too long.

As I mentioned before and as I am sure the member for Sandringham and many of my other colleagues will agree, we do need to get this bill right and we do need to protect consumers. I know that in your Frankston electorate, Acting Speaker Edbrooke, there are major building issues. There are major issues in my electorate of Mornington, but there are also builders who are doing the right thing and who are trying to get into the market and stay in the market. We cannot over-regulate; we need smart regulation that discourages the minority from doing the wrong thing while encouraging the majority to do the right thing, and this bill as it stands has not quite got the balance right. We need to go with the reasoned amendment that has been put forward by the member for Polwarth. We need to listen to all the stakeholders who have raised concerns about this bill as it stands.

Michaela SETTLE (Eureka) (17:36): I am delighted to rise today to speak on the Building Legislation Amendment (Buyer Protections) Bill 2025. I have been listening to contributions from both sides of the house for some time now, and I just want to raise one thing with those opposite. The clue is in the name of this bill. It includes the words ‘buyer protections’. This bill is about protecting Victorian homebuyers. I have heard lots from the other side about their concerns for builders. They seem to want to support dodgy builders. I was disturbed to hear many times the quotes from the HIA. Can I do a quote of my own? This is a quote from a constituent who came to see me a while ago, and he said to me that his daughter is terrified of entering into a contract to build her first home, because of what has gone on in the building industry. I know that those of us on this side of the house will listen to those voices, the voices of our community that want to build their homes and want to have confidence that the system will be there to support them.

The other thing I would like to raise on the contributions from the other side is that they seem determined to talk down Victoria. At every turn they will tell us how terrible things are in Victoria. The member for Hawthorn was telling us that this legislation is not important and that we need to address the root causes. There were some not-quite-right facts –

Brad Rowswell: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, standing order 118.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Paul Edbrooke): I do not have the standing orders book on me, but I will draw the member back to the bill.

Michaela SETTLE: Indeed I am speaking on the bill. I am speaking on the contribution from the member for Hawthorn, and as I understand the nature of debate, it is okay to address something that has been said by others. The member for Hawthorn was telling us that this bill did not go anywhere to address the underlying issues in the industry. Can I first of all say that, rather than talk down Victoria and rather than trash us, perhaps the opposition would like to acknowledge that Victoria continues to be number one in home approvals –

The ACTING SPEAKER (Paul Edbrooke): The shadow minister has another point of order, possibly on standing order 118, which is imputations on members.

Brad Rowswell: Acting Speaker, it is in reference to standing order 118, and perhaps I should have been more expansive in my previous point of order. I believe the member on her feet is casting imputations, perhaps with improper motives, on the member for Hawthorn, and that must only be done by substantive motion.

Danny Pearson: On the point of order, Acting Speaker, I listened to the member for Hawthorn’s contribution, and the member for Hawthorn was very clear in his contribution and was being quite negative in relation to the way in which this policy has been regulated over the last 10 years. That was the proposition that he put to this chamber. No member on this side of the house took exception to that; we let the member for Hawthorn make his contribution in the way in which he chose to make it. My good friend the member for Eureka is simply rebutting what was put forward by the member for Hawthorn, and I would ask that you rule the point of order out of order.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Paul Edbrooke): There is no point of order. Members are allowed to argue the point, but I will again draw the member back to the bill.

Michaela SETTLE: What I was trying to get out there is that Victoria continues to be number one in home approvals in this country, number one in home starts, number one in home completion and best of all, number one in first home buyers. We have done an enormous amount in this space. The member for Hawthorn talked about the risk factors, including red tape. Can I point him to Plan Victoria? Plan Victoria is focused on making sure that building homes is an easier process. There has been an enormous amount of work and consultation that has gone into Plan Victoria from our wonderful Minister for Planning and the Attorney-General, and there has been a lot of work done to reduce the red tape.

The other thing that the member for Hawthorn tried to suggest was that it is more expensive to build in Victoria than anywhere else. I would like to bring the member for Hawthorn’s attention to the fact that the average cost of building a house in Victoria is less than in New South Wales, the Northern Territory and the ACT. There are some facts that are important to acknowledge when we look at this bill. The other thing that the member for Hawthorn raised was that the risks for builders were around workforce issues. I am delighted to let him know that our wonderful Minister for Skills and TAFE in the other place has done extraordinary work in free TAFE, and part of free TAFE, the whole focus of free TAFE has been about looking at industries that need a stronger workforce and making free TAFE courses for them. So I hope that this brings some comfort to the member for Hawthorn that in fact those risk issues that he highlighted, being red tape, cost and workforce, are all being addressed firmly and squarely by this government, and this piece of legislation before us is now bringing forward protections for homebuyers.

As I said, we hear a lot from the other side quoting the opinion of the Housing Industry Association – I want to hear the opinion of the people in my constituency. In Maddingley we have a growing community. The buildings there go up at a fast rate, and I want those people to know that when they are entering into what is the biggest commitment of their lives, they have the Victorian government’s support in making sure that the protections and the regulations are there for them. I never want to hear a constituent come to me again and tell me that his daughter is too terrified to enter into a building contract because she feels that the regulation is not there. Those on the other side seem determined to block this and I do not understand why. In 2013 they brought very similar legislation to this house, and then, you know what, they chose to listen to the voices of the lobbyists. When their communities were asking for this legislation, they brought it here and then they buckled – they buckled to the voices of the lobbying groups and the large peak bodies of the industries.

Then in 2024, just last year, we heard them talk again and again about the need for stronger protections. The member for Brighton put out a press release demanding decisive action to protect Victorian homebuyers. Well, come on guys, get on board; we are bringing this regulation forward to protect Victorians. You asked for it in 2024, you toyed with the idea in 2013; it is now time for the opposition to come to the table and support this vital legislation that is about protecting the people in our community. When they go out to build their forever home, they need to know that the government is backing them; at the moment, there is only one side of the house that has got their backs.

It is only this side of the house that has put forward legislation that in its title says that it is for homebuyer protection, and yet all I have heard from the other side in this debate is about the protection of their big mates in the building industry. This bill is about protecting homebuyers. I think that those on the other side would do well to look at the legislation and understand what security and comfort it would give their constituents and perhaps withdraw the amendment and indeed support this strong bill – this strong bill to make regulation easier under one body, to make that journey for consumers safer and to make sure that they are not left with phoenix builders and big bills and nowhere to call home.

This legislation is probably one of the most important pieces to come forward for my constituents in Maddingley. I look at the houses going up there, and I want them to know that we have got their backs. I would ask people on the other side not to stand with dodgy builders. Stand with Victorian families; say yes to consumer protection.

Annabelle CLEELAND (Euroa) (17:46): I rise today to speak on the Building Legislation Amendment (Buyer Protections) Bill 2025. It is a bill that we cannot support. The bill’s general aim is to address ongoing challenges that new home buyers have when it comes to unresolved defects on their properties. This is something that does require urgent attention – there is no arguing that – but serious questions do remain about whether this piece of legislation is the right way to do it.

The main purpose of this bill involves transferring the domestic building insurance operations of the Victorian Managed Insurance Authority and the operations of Domestic Building Dispute Resolution Victoria to the Victorian Building Authority; granting the VBA a monopoly on the provision of domestic building insurance for homes, including those with buildings of up to three storeys; creating a statutory insurance scheme for homes, including those with buildings of up to three storeys, to be administered by the VBA; empowering the VBA with stronger authority to mandate the rectification of defective, noncompliant or incomplete building work; and introducing a system of developer bonds for residential apartment buildings over three storeys, set at 2 per cent of construction costs, to be held for up to two years. These changes will be primarily done by a series of amendments to existing legislation, including the Building Act 1993, the Domestic Building Contracts Act 1995, the Sale of Land Act 1962, the Subdivision Act 1988 and the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal Act 1998.

While both the construction industry and consumers acknowledge the issues surrounding building quality rectifications, and while the builders warranty insurance system has been poorly managed for some time, the bill fails to properly address fundamental problems. I will go into those details.

There is a total lack of clarity around the contents and obligations within building contracts, which are often at the absolute heart of these disputes. VCAT remains the ultimate decision-maker, and it continues to be underfunded and under-resourced. The proposed renaming of the VBA to the Building and Plumbing Commission is typical of Labor’s approach to name changes, and it essentially leaves all the existing processes and personnel who currently oversee the construction industry absolutely unchanged. The 10-year defect liability period for builders is too long and not clearly defined; the legislation is not supported by the industry, importantly, which is something you have to consider; and consultation must be improved.

We have already seen that the VBA has consistently failed in its licensing inspections and enforcement duties, including allowing unqualified, unlicensed builders and inadequate inspections and ignoring consumer complaints. The VBA has also failed to properly manage the insurance payments of builders, with catastrophic failure, particularly during the Porter Davis collapse. so we cannot expect different outcomes just by dressing up the VBA with a new name. They do say that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. I feel like that is where we are at. This is what Labor does. Sadly, the issues are compounded by the government’s inability to manage other areas of housing, particularly through their so-called big build.

Housing waitlists continue to grow under Labor, with the Victorian housing register seeing a staggering increase of 65 per cent over the last eight years. Since the launch of the Big Housing Build in 2020 we have seen a 23 per cent increase alone. It now means as of December more than 65,000 families are now on that waitlist, many of whom are facing nearly two years of waiting before they can secure a home. This waitlist number is a new record, but it is a record that this government should be absolutely ashamed of. For families escaping domestic violence the situation is dire: waitlists of nearly 20 months. It represents an alarming and heartbreaking increase of more than 120 per cent since 2018.

We have to face the fact that the current approach is not enough to meet the needs of our community and those who are most vulnerable. The statistics point to broader concerns to be had with this government’s legislative ability when it comes to managing housing policy. Much like this piece of legislation before us today, we have seen insufficient investment, poor planning and a lack of effective solutions to tackle the housing crisis in Victoria. These issues have carried over into the Big Build, with public housing and general housing construction numbers failing to hit their mark despite promises made by the government. Between June 2015 and June 2024 Victoria added just 4000 new social and community dwellings, less than half of what New South Wales delivered during the same period. The overall number of public housing bedrooms has also shrunk. In June 2018 there were over 160,000 public housing bedrooms. In June last year that number had dropped to less than 156,000. Public housing initiatives like the Benalla West project in my electorate have completely stalled and gone ridiculously over budget – something very on brand for Labor – resulting in the displacement of so many families and so many households and leaving countless on housing waitlists and moving out of our region. How can we trust a government to manage their building authorities and protect new home buyers from dodgy builders when they are unable to manage the basics of building homes and even the government’s own budget targets are falling well, well short? They have failed to reach their housing targets and are building fewer homes on land they own. That is 440 fewer homes on Homes Victoria land and more than 1100 less on land owned by other government departments. These are huge numbers. When we look at the housing crisis, this is where legislation has to look. Since 2018 a total of 3085 public housing homes have been demolished, 741 sold and nearly a thousand properties disposed of. These statistics speak for themselves. The government is failing to deliver the social and public housing Victoria so desperately needs. The targets are missed, homes are being sold off or demolished and the shortage is growing astronomically.

Another area within housing that needs desperate attention revolves around the ongoing and persistent delays relating to housing and building permits. In Seymour we have seen a 365-day turnaround for basic building permits, with councils ill equipped to handle them. Areas like Seymour are trying to deal with complicated flood overlays, insurance challenges and delays, making it hard for builders and housing industries to succeed. And it is having a harmful impact on buyers and renters. We have got less than 3 per cent rental availability in our communities – 1 per cent in some. It is impossible to get a roof over your head. And we have seen this government backtrack already when it comes to planning flying squads, recently reintroducing a trial after previously cancelling the cost-effective and successful initiative. This is something we have been calling on for years, particularly as the housing crisis under the government continues to get worse. Labor’s planning failures are the reason we have a housing affordability crisis.

A member interjected.

Annabelle CLEELAND: I have just listed it all. Now they are scrambling to catch up with yet another plan and yet another piece of legislation that will not deliver results and again continues to miss the mark. I look forward to seeing a day where effective housing legislation is introduced in these chambers, but this bill does not hit the mark.

Martha HAYLETT (Ripon) (17:55): I rise today to speak on the Building Legislation Amendment (Buyer Protections) Bill 2025. I may be biased, but I truly think rural and regional Victoria is the best place to call home. Over recent years we have seen more people flock to our regions, and there is no wonder why: we have the best state parks, sunsets, walking trails, reservoirs, lakes, cafes, restaurants, history and more, not to mention the kindest, most decent people. It is important, though, that we as a government make sure that those people have affordable, quality homes to live in, both locals and those who want to move to the regions as well. This bill does just that. It creates a new integrated building watchdog and gives it tough new enforcement powers to fix dodgy home building work. It also delivers new building insurance schemes to make things fairer for consumers.

The new regulator, the Building and Plumbing Commission, will take on responsibilities that are currently managed by the Victorian Building Authority, the Victorian Managed Insurance Authority and Domestic Building Dispute Resolution Victoria. It will create a one-stop shop for homebuyers, renovators and practitioners to make things easier for Victorians and place consumer protection at its heart. We know that most builders do the right thing by their customers, but sadly there are some cowboys out there that do not have the best interests of families seeking to purchase their forever home at heart. It is these cowboys that we want to crack down on and that this bill will help weed out. We want to establish a new, more powerful building watchdog to oversee the actions of builders across the state as well as to provide a safety net for consumers when things go wrong. We are trying to make it easier for homebuyers. The claims of those opposite that it is just a changed name and nothing is different here are completely false. We are simplifying the process for homebuyers and doing good by homebuyers and prospective homebuyers as well.

Buying or building a home is one of the biggest things anyone can do in their life. My husband Sam and I became home owners for the very first time just 18 months ago, and it was a real journey to navigate. Luckily, things went well, and we did not buy a place with building defects or major structural issues, but many Victorians, including constituents of mine in Ripon, do not have such luck. They put their life savings into building a home and then they get caught out by shonky developers promising them the world and delivering substandard or incomplete homes. Too often many families struggle to recover money from building companies, causing immense stress. This bill will help bring justice and peace of mind to Victorian homebuyers. It will beef up the powers of the regulator, including by issuing rectification orders to compel builders to fix or finish defective work up to 10 years after an occupancy permit has been issued. Non-compliance with these orders will be grounds for immediate suspension of practitioner registration and will also trigger the ability of homebuyers to access our new first-resort domestic building warranty so that families are not left high and dry when work has been left unfinished.

The bill also creates a new developer bond scheme, forcing developers to pay a bond of 2 per cent of the total construction costs for a housing development, which will be held by the regulator. This will help to make sure developers do the right thing. As part of this scheme, developers must notify the regulator prior to applying for an occupancy permit. The regulator may then undertake an inspection at their discretion. Within 18 months of the issuing of the occupancy permit an assessor will conduct a preliminary inspection and provide the developer with the opportunity to rectify any defective or incomplete work. If this preliminary report does not identify any defects the bond can be released back to the developer. This is brilliant, and it will be a game changer for so many housing developments and so many families.

I very much hope that those opposite support this bill and its changes to our building industry. They have already shown their hand – that they want to block more homes rather than actually build them, like we do on this side of the house. It would be a huge backflip if they do not support this bill, especially considering that the member for Mornington just six months ago called for exactly the action that we are taking here today. But who knows what the mob opposite will do on any given day. They like to change tactics, and they leave working Victorians behind in the process, but not on our side: we support Victorians at every stage of their life, including when they need us most.

We have paid almost $600 million in dodgy building work rectification costs since 2018, including to victims of the collapse of Porter Davis Homes. This bill will help us avoid such sagas in future, putting money back into Victorian pockets and boosting consumer confidence in the building industry.

Our record on building more homes speaks for itself, and reforms like the ones proposed in this bill will make sure that we keep delivering the high-quality homes Victorians deserve. We have not just delivered for homebuyers, we have delivered for renters too, including $6.3 billion to build more than 12,000 social housing properties, including 3000 homes in rural and regional Victoria and more than 100 in Ripon to date. More than 130 rental reforms have gone through this place since 2021, including strong new rental protections to stop all types of rental bidding, changing the notice period from 60 to 90 days, allowing renters to have pets in their homes and put pictures on the walls and so much more. We have also changed the rules so that people no longer require a planning permit to put a granny flat on their property, making it easier for families to build a small second home and address the housing shortage. We are also building new housing for workers in the regions, including 10 new properties with 24 bedrooms in Beaufort, which I know the Pyrenees Shire Council are so excited about, and so am I, and local businesses are very rapt about it. We have built student accommodation like the amazing accommodation for nursing, midwifery and medical students that we completed in Maryborough in my electorate back in 2023. All of these improvements for home owners, renters, public housing residents and those in need are exactly why I am so proud to be Labor and why I wanted to run for politics in the first place.

But we know more is needed, and I want to see even more investments in affordable homes across Ripon, including by developing sewerage systems in Talbot and Newbridge, better power, water and internet connections in Maryborough, more housing options for older residents in Wedderburn and Dunolly, key worker housing in St Arnaud, Ararat and Maryborough and public housing across the board. I have every confidence that we will achieve much of this, as we are a government of getting things done and genuinely delivering for rural and regional Victoria, not just talking about it.

I want to set the record straight, because those opposite have been using all different types of claims and fake facts really. I want to put on the record that Victoria continues to be number one in home approvals, number one in home starts, number one in home completions and, best of all, number one in first home buyers. We know that those opposite, they are the blockers and we are the builders. We will continue to do what is needed for Victorian homebuyers, for Victorian renters, public housing tenants and more. We aim to build 800,000 homes over the next decade, making it easier for builders, buyers and renovators to get permits and create cheaper housing, including in country Victoria.

This bill will help do just that. It is all part of us delivering for Victorians, no matter where you live. It will restore confidence in the building industry, especially after evidence of dangerously built homes, cladding fires and building insolvencies in recent years. It is time for us to better regulate the building industry and weed out the bad guys that are ruining it for the rest. I very much look forward to seeing even more reforms to the building regulator system in this place soon, and I very much hope that those opposite do the right thing by Victorians and support this bill. I commend the bill to the house.

Kim O’KEEFFE (Shepparton) (18:04): I rise to make a contribution to the Building Legislation Amendment (Buyer Protections) Bill 2025. The bill is to amend the Building Act 1993, the Domestic Building Contracts Act 1995, the Sale of Land Act 1962, the Subdivision Act 1988 and the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal Act 1998 and for other purposes. Some of the amendments the bill seeks to make include integrating domestic building regulatory functions into the Victorian Building Authority (VBA), conferring the function of administering part 4 of the Domestic Building Contracts Act on the Victorian Building Authority instead of the director of Consumer Affairs Victoria and to enhance financial protections for Victorian consumers through the establishment of a statutory insurance scheme that will be administered by the Victorian Building Authority in providing domestic building insurance on a first-resort basis for domestic buildings with a rise in storeys of three or less and further make miscellaneous consequential and technical amendments.

On this side of the house we agree that we do need to ensure that there are the right structures in place to support and protect the consumer as well as the builder. We want consumer protections and certainty that when purchasing or building a home, we are getting what we have paid for. We want people to be able to own their own home and to get more people into homes, and we know at the moment we are facing a housing crisis. There has never been a more important time to try and support the building industry to get that, to make more houses and to build more homes. We have heard the horror stories of people who have had devastating experiences when things do go wrong and the significant impact when a company collapses or a builder has done the wrong thing. We know that the building industry is already struggling with ongoing financial pressures, material costs, staff shortages and the restraints and frustration of bureaucracy and red tape. That is why it is so important to ensure that we do get this right and that we are not adding yet another barrier to the industry or building a house.

We do need to hear from the very industries that are impacted by these changes. The feedback that we have had on this side of the house is that there are many questions that are not answered, and it is no surprise that the government has failed to adequately consult and inform industry stakeholders about the proposed amendments that are contained in the bill, which will have a direct impact on the building and construction industry. Since the bill’s introduction to the house, there have been numerous stakeholders who have expressed their disappointment and frustration with the government, claiming that the bill has been rushed and the amendments contained in the bill are heavily consumer focused. So why hasn’t there been meaningful consultation with the industry before implementing such drastic reforms? Builders and developers need certainty, not further costs, regulations or red tape. The Housing Industry Association has raised their concerns, highlighting that the bill, while focused on consumer protection, may have severe consequences for home builders. The rushed nature of these reforms, combined with the excessive powers granted to the new regulator, could make it more difficult for builders to operate within a fair and predictable environment.

The Property Council of Australia, the Urban Development Institute of Australia (Victoria) and the Housing Industry Association are just three of the many groups that have criticised the government over this bill. Both the Property Council of Australia and the Urban Development Institute of Australia (Victoria) in a media release on 5 March called on the government to withdraw the bill from the house in order to allow for adequate industry consultation, which you would think is a reasonable request. In the media release, both organisations stated that they believe the speed at which the bill was developed and introduced in the house is concerning and delivers a reform package that is both unclear and unworkable. The Housing Industry Association also share the same concerns. They are concerned about the lack of progress on the related domestic building contracts legislation. The HIA are also concerned that the amendments contained in the bill are heavily consumer focused, and whilst in theory consumers will receive support from the new regulator, the impact on home builders could be devastating and the rushed and ill-considered nature of this bill as it stands poses a significant threat to the future of the Victorian housing market and the livelihoods of those within the building and construction industry.

These peak bodies representing thousands of professionals and businesses across the state have also called for the government to withdraw this bill until proper and adequate consultation takes place with industry. They have also pointed out the bill’s development leaves little time for meaningful feedback or scrutiny from those who will be affected by these changes. The Building Legislation Amendment (Buyer Protections) Bill 2025 also seeks to establish a new regulatory body, the Building and Plumbing Commission. This new watchdog would oversee several aspects of the state’s building and construction process, including a new developer bond scheme, the introduction of warranty insurance and expanded powers for the commission to issue rectification orders for up to 10 years. Whilst consumer protections are a vital part of any functioning market, these reforms have been introduced without sufficient thought or consultation with the wider industry.

The bill proposes to merge several assisting bodies, including the Victorian Building Authority, Domestic Building Disputes Resolution Victoria and domestic building insurance functions into the new Building and Plumbing Commission. The industry is concerned about the lack of clarity surrounding the commission’s new powers and their responsibilities. As such, the rushed nature of this bill has established this commission without clear understanding of its scope, and it could lead to confusion and a fragmented approach to consumer protection.

With the aggregation of existing personnel from VBA, the Victorian Managed Insurance Authority and Consumer Affairs Victoria and without reform to initial contracts there seems to be no guarantee that dispute resolution, quality management of projects and enforcement will be enhanced. No extra monitoring or management of building quality has been identified as part of the solution.

There are also concerns with the first warranty insurance scheme, the introduction of this scheme and its intent to provide greater protection to consumers. Industry is concerned about its viability. As with other state government insurers like the TAC and WorkCover, there is strong concern within industry that bureaucratic costs will not be capped; premiums will steadily increase; compliance costs, especially for small builders, will be burdensome; and premiums will be at risk of becoming a new tax impost on construction costs.

On top of this the new Building and Plumbing Commission will be able to use the need for their insurance as a lever to insist on certain actions and behaviours from builders. That could be unfair or unreasonable, especially during an unresolved dispute. The addition of yet another layer of insurance, particularly one that does not offer sufficient clarity or detail, could lead to increased costs for consumers and businesses alike. The proposed scheme could create a situation where well-meaning developers and builders who are already doing the right thing by their clients could find themselves penalised for factors that are beyond their control.

Another concern of this bill’s amendments is the power invested in the Building and Plumbing Commission to issue rectification orders for up to 10 years following the completion of building work. This provision does raise numerous considerable concerns held within the industry once again, such as the definition of defective work, which the HIA have expressed is now so broad that it could encompass a wide range of issues, like minor delays or unmet expectations rather than substantive defects. The uncertainty around what constitutes defective work will undoubtedly lead to disputes between consumers and builders, potentially resulting in significant financial and operational strain on businesses. Under the bill consumers will be able to lodge defect claims against builders for up to 10 years without clear definitions of what the word ‘defect’ can mean and without obligations for consumers to raise concerns and issues in a prompt and timely manner. As the member for Narracan pointed out, the life span of some of the things that could be classed as a defect may already have a short warranty. I note the member for Narracan’s contribution and the matters that he raised as a former builder, and the valid concerns that he shared with his knowledge and experience as a former builder with an in-depth understanding of the impact and negative consequences this bill will have on the building industry.

The requirement for builders to comply with rectification orders even during review processes places an unreasonable burden on small- and medium-sized builders. These builders, often operating on tight budgets, could face severe financial penalties if they are unable to meet the regulatory demands, even if they are in the process, as we said, of challenging the order, which is a significant concern. Builders could be held liable for work completed many years ago despite changes in ownership, building standards or market conditions. This level of uncertainty could have a chilling effect on the willingness of businesses to take on new projects, especially in an already uncertain market.

The bill also proposes a mandatory developer bond for multi-unit home building projects over three storeys. While the intention of the scheme is to ensure consumer protection, the lack of detail once again on how the scheme will be implemented is a major point of contention held by industry. Industry in particular is concerned about the financial burden that this scheme will impose on developers in an already challenging economic market, particularly the fact that the 2 per cent bond scheme as proposed will just add 2 per cent to the costs of building.

The speed with which these reforms have been introduced without sufficient consultation is concerning. The industry requires adequate time to understand, to comply with and to integrate these new requirements into their ongoing and future projects. What costs are going to be associated with these changes?

Kathleen MATTHEWS-WARD (Broadmeadows) (18:14): I rise to support the Building Legislation Amendment (Buyer Protections) Bill 2025. The great Australian dream of owning your own home is being preserved by the Allan Labor government. Clear targets to deliver more homes over the next 30 years will keep that dream alive for the next generation of home owners and also make sure there are enough rental properties available for those who need them. The $6.3 billion Big Housing Build and Regional Housing Fund when completed will deliver over a 10 per cent uplift in the total number of social housing properties in Victoria – over 13,300 social and affordable homes. Labor is building more homes for Victorians who need them, and reforms like the one proposed in this bill will make sure the homes that are being built are of high quality.

Unfortunately, most of us here know of cases of drawn-out disputes on inferior work or builders going insolvent and leaving home owners with an uncertain future. I know of a young family whose house was all the way to fixing stage – so close to moving in – when their builder went into liquidation. They had no choice but to sign another contract with another builder to get completion and their occupancy certificate, but this cost them an extra $70,000. They were forced to borrow money from friends and family to get the keys to their new home, starting their dream owing far more than they could imagine and afford. Another case saw a home owner camping in his half-built house after the collapse of a building company to stop the subcontractors, who knew they were not going to get paid either, from returning to the property and pulling out fixtures, plasterboard and timber – anything – during the middle of the night. This is what the bill seeks to stop.

The Allan Labor government listens and acts. The bill lays the groundwork for much-needed reforms to the building regulatory system, and subsequent bills will only strengthen the framework for building regulation moving forward. The bill introduces the creation of a new integrated building watchdog, bringing the responsibilities of three different authorities into one; greater enforcement powers for the integrated watchdog; a new building insurance scheme to make things fairer; and also establishes a developer bond scheme and supporting measures for high-rise construction.

The integrated building watchdog is a welcome reform. The current system is notoriously difficult to navigate, with people getting handballed from one place to another in a time of potentially great financial and emotional distress. Currently the Victorian Building Authority has the responsibility for penalising builders for defective or incomplete building work. The Victorian Managed Insurance Authority manages insurance claims when things go wrong. Domestic Building Dispute Resolution Victoria manages complaints and disputes. You can see how many consumers would potentially need to engage separately with all three of these bodies for the one issue with a property. This will now be managed all in the one place – a significant saving of time, stress and financial pressure. The integrated regulator, to be formally named the Building and Plumbing Commission in subsequent legislation, will take on the responsibilities of existing bodies, to oversee the building and plumbing industries across Victoria, as well as tough new enforcement powers. If serious defects identified by the Building and Plumbing Commission are not rectified, the regulator can stop the issuing of occupancy permits or the completion of off-the-plan sales for apartment buildings. In other words, if it is not fixed, it is not for sale and they cannot get their completion stage payment.

Under existing laws, builders are liable to fix defective and noncompliant work up to 10 years after the issue of an occupancy permit. This bill does not seek to change this law. What it does do is to give the Building and Plumbing Commission the power to issue rectification orders, giving it the strength to address seriously defective or incomplete building work by those builders out there that are not doing the right thing by their clients. I have the definition of the defects. The definition of ‘defective’ is based on the definition of ‘defective’ that has been in the Domestic Building Contracts Act 1995 since 1995. This definition is being used in this bill as well as it sufficiently captures the type of work that should be considered for rectification orders, so it has not even changed.

Rectification orders will compel a builder to fix or finish work which the regulator’s expert building inspectors deem to be seriously defective. Rectification orders will be issued on the builder who carried out the work or, in the case of buildings four storeys and above, on a developer. Noncompliance with a rectification order will be an offence and grounds for immediate suspension of registration. A builder issued a rectification order will have this published on the register of building practitioners, which is publicly available and will allow visibility for future clients to review. The regulator will also be able to recover costs for monitoring and enforcing compliance with a rectification order. An order which is not fixed by a developer on a building four storeys and above will prevent the building from being subdivided, and a building surveyor will be prohibited from issuing an occupancy permit for the building. This will present a major financial deterrent for developers to do the wrong thing by consumers – as it should.

The regulator will issue suitable operational policies to ensure rectification orders are issued in a commonsense and consistent manner, considering things like the nature of the problem, time elapsed since the build, usage and maintenance. The rectification orders are not a first step in rectifying a defect. Homebuyers will need to show that they have attempted to resolve the issue which they believe to meet the threshold of seriously defective or incomplete work with their builder before the regulator can begin actioning a request to issue a rectification order.

These protections are there for the rare occasion that the builder does not simply address any identified defects before a handover. Non-compliance with a rectification order will be a trigger for homebuyers to access our new first resort domestic building warranty for buildings under three storeys. In addition to currently having to navigate between regulatory bodies when something goes wrong with their home build, Victorians are too often being left out of pocket to the tune of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars by dodgy builders. I point out that there are so many good builders doing the right thing by consumers and building homes in a tight-margin market. Without good builders we will never get the homes we need, and I thank them for the important work they do across Victoria. This legislation is designed to protect people from the builders that do the wrong thing, like half finishing jobs and then disappearing off the face of the earth, as happened in the case mentioned by the member for Box Hill.

Currently the process for accessing insurance payments when things go wrong can be yet another hurdle after already having endured months or years of distress as people fight to have their serious building defects addressed. The current system is not in their favour. Homebuyers must go through a lengthy dispute resolution process with Domestic Building Dispute Resolution Victoria, with the possibility that their case will be rejected. Even if Domestic Building Dispute Resolution Victoria finds that the homebuyer’s complaint requires rectification work, the builder can then dispute the case in VCAT, dragging out the process for two years. If Domestic Building Dispute Resolution Victoria upholds the complaint and it still is not fixed by the builder, the home owner then needs to apply for domestic building insurance compensation. It can be years later with the work still not fixed and only then do they get to lodge an insurance claim. It is not good enough. Victorians deserve to have the confidence that if things go wrong, there will be adequate protections to prevent them from being burdened with devastating levels of debt by rogue builders. That is why this bill makes provisions for a first resort domestic building warranty, improving access to insurance by ensuring consumers can make a claim without needing to undergo a formal dispute resolution process, regardless of whether the builder is active in the industry or not.

The first resort domestic building warranty allows homebuyers to make a claim when a building issue is first identified so they will not have to face huge out-of-pocket costs for fixing defects. The warranty will eventually be solely offered and administered by the Building and Plumbing Commission, making it much less stressful for homebuyers and renovators to access the help they need when they need it. This means that in the rare cases where a builder does not comply with a rectification order, an insurance claim will be triggered directly through the Building and Plumbing Commission. The warranty will cover lost deposits, including instances where the builder has not obtained domestic building insurance, incomplete building work and non-compliant or defective building work. For buildings four storeys and above, consumers currently have no financial protection for defective building work. As apartment living grows as a choice, the bill takes the first steps to making the system fairer by introducing the developer bond scheme. Under the scheme, developers pay a bond which is held by the regulator, and if serious building issues are not addressed by the developer or builder, this money can be released to pay for rectification works.

I could go through all of that and how it works, but instead I will say that we know the vast majority of builders do the right thing by consumers. With these new protections, consumers can be confident that the Building and Plumbing Commission will weed out the industry cowboys and that they will be in safe hands whenever they are dealing with a builder in Victoria. The bill paves the way for further building legislation to ensure Victorians are confident in their new home and that their new home, apartment, rental property or social or affordable home will have been built to the greatest quality. I commend the bill to the house.

Will FOWLES (Ringwood) (18:24): It is my great pleasure to get up and have a bit of a chat about the Building Legislation Amendment (Buyer Protections) Bill 2025. I will put you all out of your suspense: I am going to be supporting this bill. Because these reforms are urgent, I will not be supporting the reasoned amendment from the member for Polwarth, though I do have some reservations about the content of the bill and some reservations about the operation of the bill. I will spend a little bit of time talking about that over the course of the next 9½ minutes.

Victorians are simultaneously in a housing availability crisis, a housing affordability crisis, a construction industry crisis and a homelessness crisis. I have spent today at the Property Council of Australia’s national housing solutions summit – hence the ridiculous get-up. It was a great event, and I got to speak with a large number of stakeholders about the many, many challenges facing Australia as it tries to remedy these crises. At the summit we heard from the federal housing minister Labor’s Clare O’Neil as well as the shadow housing minister and my local member Liberal Michael Sukkar. It is clear that housing will be front and centre in the federal campaign that is currently underway – front and centre– and I think that is a very, very good thing. How terrific to actually have the housing debate at the centre of a national campaign, certainly for the first time in my lifetime and perhaps the first time ever.

It is a terrific thing to have that debate going on. But the contrast between federal Labor’s approach and the federal coalition’s approach is stark, and indeed the contrast between state Labor and the state coalition is stark as well. Fundamentally, I think it boils down to whether you believe that private ownership of rental housing is part of the problem or part of the solution – whether you believe the government has a role in providing permanent housing to the most vulnerable Victorians or whether you believe that market-based solutions will deliver the housing stock we so desperately need.

To put some context around this I want to tell a couple of local stories first. The first story is one of regulation and compliance and new builds. It goes to the very heart of the bill before this chamber. I have firsthand experience through my constituents who live in an apartment building in New Street in Ringwood, and they have had some substantial issues: major defects to essential safety measures and leaks in their roofs leading to frequent mould that residents have been told apparently is something to be expected. One apartment has been declared uninhabitable and has been that way for eight months, along with a whole bunch of other structural issues with regard to fire safety, mobility, access, health and safety. The absolutely appalling aspect of this particular example is that the developer retains enough apartments in the block that he controls the owners corporation and is viciously, mendaciously, shamelessly exercising those numbers – not that we know anything about that in this place – in furtherance of his commercial objectives and in stark contrast to the moral imperative and the legal obligations he has to bring the building up to code. It is not good enough, and that is why you need a decent regulatory framework and – I will come to this a little bit later – a decent regulator, which we do not have at the moment. We have had exiting owners in that circumstance crystallise losses of some $100,000 on these apartments. The issue of course is the developers look forward; they do not look backwards. They are always interested in the next project, not the last project. It is very easy to forget.

Members might not realise that the Brumby government brought up some reforms reasonably similar to some of these ones back in about 2012 or 2013, and those reforms ultimately were lobbied out of existence by the Master Builders and by the Housing Industry Association and never ultimately saw the light of day. There are powerful, powerful advocates in this industry – no doubt about it. There are powerful advocates in various parts of these debates. There is a powerful advocate in the CFMEU. Less powerful than they used to be, but nonetheless a powerful advocate. The sort of rank conduct that they have gotten up to has made it increasingly difficult to be able to take seriously the views of construction workers as represented by those people. The views of construction workers of course ought to be taken very seriously, but their role in this debate has been poisoned by the corrupt leadership of the CFMEU.

We had the circumstance in New Street where apartment owners were just left high and dry by a scheme that has failed and is failing. Of course that is unacceptable. The question is: to what extent does this bill cure that ill? It actually does not of course, because it is not retroactive. That is the challenge we have. I appreciate the general premise about retroactivity of bills and how Parliament should always take great care when thinking about that. The reality is that the government has already acted as insurer of last resort in relation to Porter Davis, but that was only when the weight of numbers got scary and became a political problem. It was only when the number of home owners left in the lurch reached the hundreds, not the dozens. There are examples of builders falling over prior to Porter Davis, and they were not necessarily picked up by the government doing as it frankly always does and probably always should, and that is acting as insurer of last resort. Well, what we have here is a bill that makes the government insurer of first resort, and that is a good thing, that is an appropriate thing. Whether the Victorian Building Association is the regulator to do it or not, I have to say, is an open question. The VBA has failed on just about every metric for a substantial period of time.

I think in my 6½ years in this place I have had more VBA complaints than I have had about any other single regulator. They have failed and failed again, and it is no surprise that there have been various clean-outs of the management, the board and the management again. It has been a failed regulator. I am not sure that they are the regulator ultimately to bring this bill to life, but nonetheless the bill has my support because the principles are the right principles.

The second example I want to talk about is a very upsetting example, where a woman came into my office this week. She had a two-year-old and a five-month-old. Her mother had died. Her mother got evicted from her apartment one day after she died. As a result this woman, who had been living with her mother as her carer – her former partner has choofed off – is left facing the prospect of homelessness with a two-year-old and a five-month-old. We – my office, I and my staff – rang every single homelessness support agency and provider right across the eastern suburbs. We were able to secure ultimately a bit of a piecemeal solution with some funding for motel rooms for a few additional nights, and we are continuing to work on a solution that is a permanent solution for this woman. But every single agency we spoke to said, ‘We don’t have any more money. We need the government to give us more money.’

Could you think of a circumstance more wanting of public intervention, more deserving of public intervention, than a single mother with a two-year-old and a five-month-old facing the very real prospect, were it not for our intervention, of sleeping in her car that night? This is the very real coalface of this crisis. That circumstance is a heartbreaking circumstance. No MP in this place wants to have to tell a woman with a two-year-old and a five-month-old, ‘Hey, sorry; we’ve tried, but there’s nothing out there for you.’ This is a crisis that simply must be addressed.

This bill goes part of the way by making sure the apartment stock that goes into the market is actually fit for purpose, and so it should. I appreciate the coalition’s criticisms about the efficacy of the regulator, and I understand them. I disagree with the coalition’s assessment of the 2 per cent bond, however. You need to have a bond system in place. Yes, it is going to get factored into the pricing, of course it is, but effectively it is a compulsory insurance scheme that is paid for by the beneficiary of the scheme. Well, we do that all the time. We do it with transport accidents, we do it with workplaces and we do it with emergency services. There are all sorts of compulsory insurance schemes, and I see no reason for the coalition to stand opposed to this particular compulsory insurance scheme, especially given the fundamental importance of that which we are trying to insure. Apartment owners have been ridden over roughshod by regulators and by governments right around the nation for years. These protections go some of the way to ensuring that those apartment owners do have access to some protections.

Now, this bill does nothing for my constituents in New Street, because the die has already been cast there. As I say, people have exited that building at losses of $100,000 for apartments between about $600,000 or $700,000. These are massive losses, life-alteringly bad losses, and this bill does not look backwards. My urging to the government is to give proper consideration. Yes, I understand the government is looking at the 10-year defects period and to what extent that will be retrospective. I would encourage them to consider extending that insurance scheme backwards as well. I have got so much more to say on this topic and related topics, but I do commend this bill to the house and I am glad to support it.

Colin BROOKS (Bundoora – Minister for Industry and Advanced Manufacturing, Minister for Creative Industries) (18:34): I am really proud to be able to rise in this place today and support this bill. This bill, as previous speakers have said, takes the first step in establishing a framework where we have the transferring of the Victorian Managed Insurance Authority’s domestic building insurance business to the Victorian Building Authority, transferring responsibility for domestic building dispute resolution services provided by Domestic Building Dispute Resolution Victoria to the VBA, establishing a first-resort domestic building warranty scheme which will be operated by the VBA for domestic homes up to three levels high, providing the VBA with stronger enforcement powers and establishing a developer bond system for residential apartment buildings over three levels as well as a few other things in relation to VCAT.

I want to say that this is a really important piece of legislative reform and one that has been a long time coming, and I am really proud that we have got to a position where this government is introducing this legislation for debate in the Parliament. As many speakers have said, building a home or an extension is one of the biggest financial outlays that most people will make in their entire life. It is also a complex industry. Because most people make usually just the one purchase, and certainly with a first purchase, it is not something they are accustomed to. Those people are not as sophisticated as people in the sector are at knowing how the system works, and unfortunately we have seen examples of people doing the wrong thing – shoddy builders and people who dupe people through that process. The term ‘dodgy builder’ has been used in this debate, but it is important to distinguish the vast majority of people in the building sector, who are reputable and do good work, from those that do poor work and to say that it is this cohort that this bill seeks to address.

I want to acknowledge industry feedback on this bill. This government consults closely with industry on its housing reforms. We listen carefully to those views. On many occasions we will take those views on board and deliver them and at other times we will disagree, and in some cases, in some of the stakeholder feedback, this bill differs from the feedback of the industry. But this is important reform for the reasons that I have just mentioned: bringing the regulatory insurance and dispute functions together and tilting the balance back in favour of consumers. Many members on this side of the house have spoken today about examples of the life-changing consequences poor building work can have for people. It can cause a whole range of further problems for people as well.

I am absolutely gobsmacked that the opposition both are opposing the bill and have moved a reasoned amendment – their opposition could not be stronger –and, further to that, at the lack of a coherent argument against it. There have been a whole range of scattered arguments against this particular piece of legislation but not a coherent argument. I think that has been the biggest disappointment, that those opposing this legislation have not actually been able to put together a coherent argument as to why they are opposing this particular piece of legislation.

Of some of the speakers opposite I have heard today, one was in here shrieking much earlier on that builders would have to go back and fix defects. Well, yes, that is the point of the legislation. If a build is done and paid for and there is a defect, minor or major, we would expect the builder to go back and fix that defect. I think every Victorian would expect that a job that is done with minor or major defects is rectified. I think most good builders, if their attention is drawn even to a minor defect, will go back and fix that minor defect. That is not a reason to vote against this legislation.

We heard the former Leader of the Opposition talk about workforce shortages as a contributing factor to the pressure on the housing industry here in Victoria. I find it quite staggering that those who padlocked TAFEs – those who shut TAFE campuses down – would come in here and seek to lecture the government about workforce shortages. The member for Hawthorn came in here and was complaining about red tape and how it is hard for builders to build homes because of red tape. This is the same guy who stood on the back of a ute in his own electorate opposing housing development. The Liberal Party has had protests in Brighton against the government’s plans to make it easier to build more housing where people want to live, closer to the people that they want to live near. This is an amazing experience of hypocrisy writ large from those opposite.

There has been discussion about social housing. Social housing is so important for the reasons we have heard many people talk about. We acknowledge that there are absolute pressures on social housing here and right around the country, particularly for those people who need it the most. This government is investing $6.3 billion in the Big Housing Build to deliver more social housing. We always look to our national government to do more. We saw over the period of the Liberal–National parties in Canberra absolutely nothing done in terms of investment in social and affordable housing in this country. It was a shameful period of housing policy neglect in our country’s history. When the Albanese government came in and brought their housing package to the Senate we saw those opposite – the Liberals, the Nationals and the Greens – oppose that package in the Senate for months if not over a year. I cannot remember the exact amount of time, but it was a long period of time. I remember it quite well because I was housing minister at the time. For those opposite now to seek to complain about the lack of social housing when for a period of many, many months they refused to lift their voices and ask their colleagues in Canberra to pass that package reeks of hypocrisy.

As I say, the arguments offered by those opposite in relation to their opposition to this bill are cynical and duplicitous.

The reforms outlined in this bill today help to build confidence in the building sector here in Victoria. They say to consumers that they can go ahead and sign a contract for some building work for a new home with confidence that the government has their back in terms of the quality of the work that will be done. This is part of a package of broader reforms; this reform sits as part of the broader housing package that the government is taking forward, and this work is having a real impact. We have seen the most recent figures that have been released by the ABS showing that Victoria is building more homes than any other state in the country. We saw in this data, which was released in January and is relevant to the year ending September last year, that Victoria built 61,260 homes in that period, 15,600 more than New South Wales and 28,000 more than Queensland. A significant amount of housing is being built here in Victoria, and the government is acting to make sure that the policy settings are right to continue delivering more housing for Victorians. This is not just in terms of housing completions – the data also shows that our housing approvals are leading the country, so there is a pipeline of housing coming down for Victorians. There is the work that the wonderful Minister for Planning is doing in terms of rolling out activity centres, providing for small second homes on residential lots, progressing key precincts like Fishermans Bend and Arden and freeing up surplus government land to ensure that more housing is built when government does not need that land – all of these measures lend themselves to providing confidence in the housing sector, and these reforms are a key part of that. I commend this bill to the house.

Emma KEALY (Lowan) (18:42): I rise today to speak on the Building Legislation Amendment (Buyer Protections) Bill 2025. While you might not believe it given the contributions by those opposite, there is a housing crisis in regional Victoria as well as in Melbourne. I have heard very, very little from the government in terms of what they are doing to improve housing access and affordability in rural and regional Victoria. It is not just about private housing – about houses that are being built and privately purchased – this is about the government’s failure to build more public housing and to make sure that there is sufficient emergency housing.

I have heard very compelling and moving stories from those on both sides of the chamber about people that we speak to on a regular basis who come to their local member of Parliament’s office in tears, stressed, unsure where to turn to and unable to find a roof to sleep under that night, a safe place for them to take their family, their children. It does not matter what their scenario is – it does not matter whether they are new to the country or new to the region – there is no emergency housing available. It does not matter if it is a woman who is fleeing an extraordinarily violent relationship, with young children. We all recall and have heard the stories ourselves of women fleeing family violence who are offered a swag or a tent to sleep in because this government, after 10 years, simply has neglected to build the housing stock that so many Victorians desperately need when they cannot afford and cannot pull together the resources to be able to do it themselves.

The hidden crisis in Victoria is women who are sleeping on their friends’ couches or pulling up a swag in the back shed. They are doing whatever they can. They are sleeping at friends’ places, they are sleeping at their sister’s place or they are sleeping at their parents’ places. They are going wherever they can and moving frequently. They have been given up on by the Allan Labor government, and they do not know where else to turn. They so rarely turn up in the statistics, but they are there.

I wish that the Allan Labor government would deliver on just a few of the words that they commit to women who are seeking refuge from family violence and to a few of those people who are homeless and tonight will be wondering where they are going to sleep and whether they will be safe. There are far too many Victorians in that situation, and that number is just increasing. In fact when we look at the scenario we have got in Victoria it is no wonder we have got a housing crisis. This is of the government’s own doing.

These are Labor’s policies, which sound good on paper – they love to announce the big numbers and all they are investing – but let us look at the outcomes for just a moment and what the impact has been after 10 years of Labor in Victoria. When it comes to housing, we had a promise of 80,000 homes each and every year, but in its first year of delivering on this promise the government only delivered about 75 per cent of that target, or about 61,000 homes. We were already way, way, way behind what the government promised voters at the last election as to where we would be in Victoria.

There are more than 60,000 Victorians on the public housing waitlist. They are the people that are homeless. They are the people that are couch surfing. They are the people who are just trying to find somewhere safe for their kids and themselves overnight. In Victoria there are 15,600 fewer rentals available this year alone. This year there have been so many properties withdrawn from the rental market that there are nearly 16,000 fewer rental properties.

I have heard a lot from speakers from the Labor government during this debate around what Labor are doing to build housing. Well, that is the outcome of its policies that you it has so far through this place and through various budgets. It is failing. Jacinta Allan is failing to ensure that we have safe, affordable and accessible housing in this state. The Premier has done an insufficient job in making sure that the levers that government have available to them promote the building of more housing. For goodness sake, start delivering on budgets that actually build more emergency housing and public housing for those Victorians who need our support more than any others. They are the people we should be fighting for.

There are many impacts on the shortage of housing in Victoria. I would like to refer to the Real Estate Institute of Victoria’s report, which only just bounced into my inbox probably half an hour ago, so it is hot off the press. This is the REIV’s submission to the inquiry into the supply of homes in regional Victoria, so it is specific to the area that I represent and the member for South-West Coast represents. It is the area that we are passionate about, and we bring the voice of these people to the Parliament because they are so often forgotten by a city-centric Labor government. Seventy-seven per cent of REIV members know that it is property taxation that is impacting on regional housing supply. This is of no surprise.

Again, this is a number, but let us look at where that comes from. Labor have increased the amount that you spend on government fees, charges and taxes on a new home build to just over 40 per cent. If you buy a house and land package – or perhaps it is a house and tax package – in Lucas, just outside of Ballarat, 42 per cent of that is just putting money into the government’s pocket. That sounds bad on its own because there are a lot of people who when they build their dream home put the niceties aside. They put the silver lining of their dream to the side. They might not have money to go and do the landscaping straightaway. They cannot afford new furniture. It is the furniture that they may have had from the time when they were at uni or hand-me-downs from their parents or other family members. They might not be able afford curtains. You see in some of those new homes there are blankets or sheets or something that are put up in the window. So through these massive taxes not only is the Allan Labor government stealing the dream that Victorians have about what they want their home to look like –

Members interjecting.

Emma KEALY: It is outrageous, because it is exactly what the Labor government is doing.

Nick Staikos: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, the bill before us is about developer bonds and about first-resort insurance and about the rectification of defects; it is not about the matters that the member is speaking to, and I ask that you bring her back to the bill.

The ACTING SPEAKER (John Mullahy): I ask the member for Lowan to come back to the bill.

Emma KEALY: It has been a wideranging debate, which does include the housing crisis, which I have heard mentioned by those opposite. My concern is that 42 per cent of value of a new home build is something that adds to everybody’s mortgage. It is extra money that people are having to find every single month when they pay back the banks. It is impacting on the cost of living and it is impacting on the affordability of homes for every Victorian in this state. Labor must do better. We need to listen to places like the REIV and to property developers. I know that seems a bad thing, but do you know what? These are people who want to invest in more homes. We need to hear the voices of people who are homeless and facing homelessness who can find public housing –

Nick Staikos: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, the member is defying your ruling. I ask that you bring her back to the bill.

The ACTING SPEAKER (John Mullahy): I ask the member for Lowan to come back to the bill.

Emma KEALY: It does not even go to touch the sides of what we need to see from government. We need to see serious investment in public housing and emergency housing. We need government to not look at just dipping their hand in pockets through more and more and more taxes, which is having a massive impact on housing availability and cost of living. We need to support more tradies in the industry. I spoke to Jeremy Forbes from HALT last week; he is doing an amazing amount of work in advocating for better mental health outcomes for tradies, because too many take their own lives, too many are turning to drugs and alcohol, and it is impacting on their lives in a terribly negative way. I urge the government to fund organisations like HALT, like LETS TALK in the south-west of Victoria, like the rural outreach worker program and support the mental health of our most vulnerable. But most importantly, I think, in this budget I want to see Labor review the taxes on property; let us cut it back. Let us unlock some of those barriers to have people building more homes in regional Victoria to make sure those people who live in country Victoria are not paying more and more and more, that we are not seeing massive increases in the values of homes and that anyone who wants to live in regional Victoria can afford somewhere.

Sarah CONNOLLY (Laverton) (18:52): I am absolutely so pleased to rise to speak on the Building Legislation Amendment (Buyer Protections) Bill 2025, and from the previous member’s contribution I thought I had actually read the wrong bill, but I tell you I am going to be talking about this bill. This bill is going to be so popular in my community. The aim, member for Lowan, of this bill is to deliver on our government’s landmark reforms to the building industry, making it easier to build more homes for Victorians. We know that by 2051 Victoria will need an additional – get this, member for South-West Coast – 2.24 million homes; 2.24 million homes so that our kids, your kids, your grandkids, your great-grandkids and their kids and so on can achieve the dream of home ownership or to find, most importantly – remember, not everyone wants to own their own home –an affordable rental to live in.

I have stood here in this place before and I have talked about the importance of recognising the rights of renters. I spent quite a few years over the past decade renting, and I can tell you some of the rental reforms here in this place have been outstanding to protect renters, but it is why our government is absolutely determined to get more folks into homes in places, most importantly – let us face it – where they want to live, because by increasing the supply of housing we make it more affordable; it is simple. It means that more people can afford to live in the inner and middle-ring suburbs that are well established and well connected to public transport and amenities. That is something I feel really strongly about as the member for Laverton, because I toggle inner, middle and outer western suburbs. It means that there is less of a reliance on outer-suburban growth areas like in my electorate of Laverton, like Truganina and Williams Landing, and like the folks that are living in the many, many suburbs that make up the Wyndham municipality. It means that there is less reliance on those outer-suburban growth areas to carry all the heavy lifting. That is what folks in the outer west are doing – they are carrying the heavy lifting for Victoria’s population growth. The City of Wyndham is bigger than Greater Geelong and still growing.

What this bill is also about is ensuring our kids can afford a place to themselves, close to their parents, in the communities they grew up in. That is something that people on this side of the house are out talking to folks about every day in their electorates. Parents do want their children to live close to home. I openly say I never want my children to leave home. I think the best I can hope for is that they will live down the street, or if I am extra hopeful they might be able to able to afford the house next door, but we need to make sure they can afford a home or a rental property.

I remember when the Premier began two weeks of incredible landmark housing reforms last year. I remember when those opposite, led by the member for Brighton – we all remember that – protested out the front of the Premier’s press conference. I am sure the member for Brighton thought that was a really smart thing to do, but time and time again it has come back to haunt him. ‘The blocker from Brighton,’ I think he is now known as here in this place. They were absolutely out of their minds with anger at the prospect of more homes being built in their leafy inner suburban areas, with ample amounts of train stations, tram and bus connections and schools – the sort of stuff that people in Truganina and Williams Landing and other folks in Wyndham can only dream of.

If those opposite and their protesters had their way, every single one of them looking for a place to live would just be pushed out into the outer burbs. I think, and I am pretty sure I am correct on this one – wait for it – I even heard one of them say in the news coverage, ‘Just send them to the outer burbs.’ Can you believe the audacity of those opposite? Send them to the outer burbs. What an anthem that is for the 2026 election, let me tell you that. Suburbs like ours in Melbourne’s outer west grow faster than our ability to service them with the infrastructure they need.

Members interjecting.

Sarah CONNOLLY: You can think that is a laughing matter when you want to send people into the outer west. Believe me, I applaud what we are doing here in this space in reorienting this growth. We are getting more apartments, townhouses and units in those established inner- and middle-ring suburbs. But of course it is not just important that we build more homes; we need to ensure that these homes are well built, because God forbid if someone wanting to build a home or move into a newly built home should possibly ask for a quality build. That is what we are going to give them: you get what you pay for.

We need to ensure that the building activity – and there is going to be a hell of a lot going on in the next couple of decades – that goes on in these areas is up to scratch. It is why we announced a new building watchdog, the Building and Plumbing Commission, which will be a one-stop shop for all things related to building work here in Victoria for builders, for homebuyers and for renovators alike. If you go out and talk to people on the streets, this makes sense to them. It does not make sense to those opposite, but it makes sense to the punters out on the street when we talk about this. It will replace the existing Victorian Building Authority, Domestic Building Dispute Resolution Victoria and the Victorian Managed Insurance Authority, enforcing building laws and regulations and building insurance and providing a space for resolving disputes between home builders and their contracted buyers. Because as much as those opposite would like to think it does not happen, these disputes are happening before us right now and there will be those in the future.

More importantly, this new integrated Building and Plumbing Commission will have greater enforcement powers. It will have the teeth it needs to go after builders who do the wrong thing. Those opposite time and time again only talk about builders doing the right thing. The majority do do the right thing, but what we know is there are situations where builders are not doing the right thing, and we need to do something to make it fairer. What we are saying is that if serious defects are identified by the commission and they are not rectified, it will be able to stop the issuing of occupancy permits or the completion of off-the-plan sales for apartments. Let me be clear: if it is not fixed, it is not for sale. I cannot tell the chamber how much this will mean for families living in my electorate who have had constant issues dealing with building defects, where builders have all the power and the homebuyers have absolutely none.

This bill will be absolutely transformative for the domestic building industry. It will make things so much easier for the folks in my electorate looking to build and buy new homes. We need to build more homes right across the state, and we need to make sure that those homes are built to the quality that Victorians rightly expect.

Business interrupted under sessional orders.